Pawns of the Gods
by Water-smurf
Summary: It turns out that it's harder to snuff a soul than they thought. What do you do when you're trapped with those you are required to hate and those who would soon see you sent out to destroy those who you love? Well, none of them have the faintest idea.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a little something I cooked up on the Crack Pairings Thread to work on when my other stories are giving me trouble. I don't put as much effort into ensuring that this is quality, so this is more something to read if you've got time to waste. Nonetheless, I'm interested in seeing where I go with this, so I'm just giving these characters a basic plotline to follow and then letting them run wild. I hope you enjoy it, and though it's not much, I hope you at least walk away entertained.

Oh, and I'll let you figure out who's going to be paired with who. ;)

* * *

Every time he woke up, she was there.

She was human, so he was afraid at first. She never tried to kill him, but she was still human.

Whenever she looked up from the hearth she was tending, she would just smile mildly. Sometimes, she would even stand and brush her lips against his temple, murmuring something in a language that he did not understand.

When she first did it, he recoiled in disgust. How dare she, a human, kiss him? She only looked at him in mild confusion, shrugged, and went back to tending the hearth. He slipped back to unconsciousness again soon after.

The next time she did it, he wasn't so shocked. With calmness came awareness. Her lips were soft and much warmer than any other's, but he found the feeling pleasant. The first time he didn't recoil from her touch, she smiled and wrapped the blankets a little tighter around him.

He didn't know how long it worked like that. Her gentle healing during bouts of unconsciousness and chaste kisses between tending the hearth. He slipped in and out of consciousness and time became fluid. He prayed to his god to protect him, but he never received a response. Eventually, he gave up.

The human women always kept up her quiet vigil.

---

When he first was able to see further than two feet in front of him, he stood up from his bed. He promptly fell down.

The woman immediately was by his side, clucking softly, and slipped his arm over her shoulder, helping him up.

"Thank you… whoever you are."

He didn't think that she understood him, but her smile said that she understood the tone. She helped him back into his bed, but he stayed sitting up, excited to examine his immediate surroundings for the first time in who-knew how long.

His eyes jumped everywhere. The room he had been sleeping in was red and black with a hearth and three beds, his included. Simple and rather anticlimactic after such a long time wondering. When he looked closely at the woman who had tended to him with such care, he had a pause.

Now that he saw her, she didn't seem particularly… human. Definitely of the human species if one merely looked at obvious aesthetics, but there was something about her distinctly non-human.

Her hair was curly and blond, falling just past her shoulders. Her eyes were gentle and blue. Her face seemed perpetually blushing with the heat of the fire she was constantly tending. Her skin seemed to glow gold.

He was a little afraid, but her smile soothed him.

The other beds made him curious. He had to squint to see them clearly—his eyesight was still bad, for some reason, and he saw that someone was curled up under the blankets in each one. He glanced at the woman, the question obvious in his eyes.

She shrugged, smiled, and touched the blankets of one of the neighboring beds lightly.

---

He was practicing walking when he heard a groan from the bed next to him. His grip on his own bedpost was tight as he looked over at the covers with interest. The woman looked up from the hearth, eyes looking as though they were glowing from an inner light.

Another woman, definitely pure human, pushed back the covers, black hair messy and ragged, skin sweaty. Her eyes were clouded with the fever he was only just recovering from, her dry lips moving over and over again, a mere rasp escaping them. "Soon… Soon… Soon…"

He warily edged towards the bed. The glowing non-human woman watched him, eyes mild and unassuming, as he tentatively knelt by the moaning human.

He wanted to recoil from her. She was human. She was dangerous. She was one of the people who beat him down and took everything away from him. She was one of the people who chased him down with fire and who left him with all those scars on his stomach and who killed his family…

She was also sick, and the blond human-looking-non-human had tended to him. Couldn't he be just as kind and merciful and provide some sort of tenderness for this ill woman? How was he any better than humans if he left a sick woman to die just because of her species?

He shifted a little so he was leaning on his hands. He slowly picked up the soft cloth in a basin filled with water that the non-human woman at the hearth kept there and gently dabbed the black-haired human's sweaty brow. She let out a pitiful moan, eyes rolling slightly to look at him, but he wasn't sure if she could see him through the thick fever-induced film over her pupils. "…Soon? Darling?"

She knew Common.

He wouldn't lie; it felt wonderful to be with someone who he could understand.

He forgot she was human for a moment, wiping her brow again gently and smiling. "Soon? Don't worry; you'll be back with him soon."

He realized belatedly that he didn't know that. The last _he_ remembered before his fever was falling into a weird blue and purple portal thing with a chicken.

What ever happened to that chicken?

The woman let out another soft moan and her eyes closed. She was unconscious again.

---

It was a long time before the woman regained awareness of her surroundings.

It started when he was by her bed, dabbing her forehead again and cooling her down. Her eyes were half-closed, filmed over as usual, and her messy hair stuck to her face, sticky with sweat.

The film in her eyes thinned for a moment and very briefly, their gazes met.

The woman immediately jerked back, eyes rolling with fear, breath coming in quick gasps. "Goblin!"

His response was instinctive. His cleric's instinct clashed with his goblin's instinct, but in the face of the woman's illness, the cleric won. He reached out, touching her shoulders, and smiled in the most calming way he could. "Don't get excited. You're really sick."

"You're… a goblin…"

"I know. You're a human."

The black-haired woman didn't resist it when he gently pushed her back on the bed. "Goblin…"

"Yeah. Don't worry—it's really unpleasant, but you'll get better. I have the same thing, but my fever's already broken." He put the cloth in the water and drew her covers over her shivering body. "Try to keep your body temperature up—it's trying to kill whatever's got you sick."

"Goblin… where's… Soon?"

"Soon?" He smiled sympathetically. Had he been in this situation before the illness, he would have left the woman to suffer her feverish hallucinations, but his time sick and under the tender care of the non-human-human woman admittedly made him feel more empathetic. "Is Soon your husband?"

She nodded slowly, sweat trickling down the side of her face.

"I don't know where he is. When I started recovering from whatever we have, you were already here. No one else who speaks Common is around." He tentatively patted her hand. "You're sweating. That probably means that your fever's breaking."

"Name?"

One of his ears perked a little in surprise.

"Your name… want… name…"

The woman blindly clutched his arm, fingers digging hard into his skin. He winced in surprise, his heart skipping a beat from fear, and he quickly reminded himself that this human was not going to kill him.

"I'm Yutrin." He tentatively touched the woman's hand. "Who're you?"

"I'm… Mijung…"

Her hand fell away from his arm and she fell unconscious again.

The non-human woman at the hearth looked up and smiled mildly.

---

After that, Mijung's recovery came quickly.

Before Yutrin knew it, she was impatiently trying to walk without support, and he found that he had to catch her several times. Each time she would twist a little in his grip, but she would never struggle enough so that he dropped her. The non-human woman rarely stood up anymore, content to allow the goblin cleric handle Mijung's recovery, though she often glanced up to make sure that they did not need help. He missed the feel of her lips against his temple, though he'd rather die than to admit to it.

He never initiated conversation with Mijung. Though it was nice to hear someone speak Common again, he never forgot that she was human. He knew that she posed no threat in her condition, but he was afraid. He had a feeling that she sensed his fear. Soon after her first return to sensibility, she started giving him smiles. Never a touch—that would terrify him and disgust her—but she would always be willing to smile.

"_So. You're Yutrin."_

"_Yes, Ma'am." _

"_Do you have any idea where we are?"_

"_None. I haven't been outside of this room since I recovered from the same fever you had."_

"_What's the last thing you remember, then?"_

"_Getting eaten by a pink and purple rift in the sky. With a chicken."_

"…_You know, usually I'd laugh, but that's pretty much _my_ story. Minus the chicken part, of course."_

_A curious look._

"_You really don't want to know why I had a chicken. Don't ask." _

Then the last of the patients started to groan.

---

Mijung and Yutrin were tender in their care of the last patient. Yutrin carried the kindness the non-human had shown him, and Mijung carried the nursing he had done for her.

They couldn't exactly understand the patient very well. He murmured in chopped up Common and Dwarven, never quite stringing together a proper sentence, and he would all too often be seized by convulsions.

"_Do you think that he's going to make it?"_

"_He has to."_

Yutrin felt more and more frustrated with his lack of healing spells. The Dark One hadn't answered his prayers once since he had awoken. Mijung was understanding, though, and told him that he did well enough without his magic.

Though both had to privately admit that their patient was a strange one. A dark-skinned dwarf with blond hair, a braided beard, and a battle ax against his bed. Yutrin was terrified of the ax. What if the dwarf woke up one day fully sensible and cut off his head?

"_You don't have to be so nervous. We're all civilized here."_

"_Civilization has nothing to do with it. You don't know what it's like to spend your whole life knowing that, if anyone without green skin and pointy teeth find you, you're going to be murdered."_

After a few days, Mijung dragged away the ax and hid it under her mattress, ready to be given back to their patient once he had a full grip on the world around him.

The non-human woman contentedly tended to the fire.


	2. Chapter 2

Yutrin tiredly sat on his bed, body trembling, breath coming in quick, shaky gasps. Mijung frowned, wiping the dark brow of their patient and soaking the cloth in the small basin of water they kept by his bedside. "You are running yourself into the ground."

"I'll be fine." Yutrin rubbed his arms, noting his lack of cloak and wishing for it. Despite the fire that the non-human woman resolutely tended to, he felt very… cold. "What about you? You're the one whose fever broke the most recently."

"You're shaking."

"I'm not."

Mijung rolled her eyes. "Listen, I'll look after him for the night, okay? Get some sleep for once."

"No, no, I'm the cleric here." Yutrin made a dismissive motion, hand giving a tell-tale tremble. "Go and rest."

He didn't mention the fact that he was terrified of sleeping for too long with a human and dwarf with access to weapons so close.

"You're getting yourself sick."

"I'm already sick." Yutrin made another small wave of his hand. "You've been having backaches, haven't you? You've probably been leaning over him too much. Just sleep."

Her expression was fleeting, but unmistakable. It was distrust. She thought that he would hurt her or the dwarf if she slept too long.

Just like a human.

He scowled and looked away, rubbing his arms for warmth and voice dropping to a mumble. "Go to sleep. I didn't kill you while you were sick; I'm not killing you now."

Her eyes widened a little. "Wait, I didn't… oh, never mind. Do what you want, Yutrin. See if I care." She scowled crossly and slipped under her covers, wrapping up and dozing off.

Yutrin forced himself to stand, dizzily trying to get reoriented, trying to convince himself that fever wasn't filming over his eyes. The non-human woman looked up from the fire, the barest of frowns flickering over her lips, and her eyes seemed to glow like coals.

After a moment, though, she looked back at the hearth, poking the burning logs gently, skin rippling with gold radiance.

Yutrin shook his head, clearing his vision and going to the dwarf's bedside. Something in the back of his mind flickered—something he should have been attending to—but the niggling was gone in a moment. It had been happening to him a lot.

He knelt by the bed slowly, unable to support his own weight standing straight, and pressed his fingers against the dwarf's neck gently, counting the beats of his patient's heart.

Dark eyes snapped open, pupils zeroing in on the goblin and retracting to pinpoints.

The dwarf slammed forward, tackling Yutrin to the ground, crushing his legs, hitting the back of his head on the ground hard enough to make a gash, and curling his fingers around the goblin's throat.

"MIJUNG! HEL—"

Yutrin's eyesight went black. He felt the color of his face changing. He feebly scrabbled at the thick fingers around his esophagus, struggles getting weaker and weaker…

"Get the hell off of him!"

The dwarf let out a shout of pain, and the barest wisp of sight returning to reveal Mijung awkwardly wielding his ax, having swiped at his arm with the sharp part. "Yutrin!"

Yutrin awkwardly twisted so that he could drag himself to Mijung, wrapping his arms around her leg weakly despite their previous aversion to touching each other, his body shutting down slowly.

The dwarf recoiled from the ax-wielding woman, eyes wide and mouth open slightly to speak.

"Stay away from him. Is that how you thank a cleric that saved _both_ of us?"

The dwarf blinked, then backed up, shame-faced.

Mijung huffed, getting on her knees so that she was eye-level with the goblin. "Yutrin? Yutrin?"

Yutrin dizzily stared back at her, trying to concentrate on breathing. It was getting hard to get air through his bruised esophagus. His eyes rolled.

"Yutrin, stay with me!"

He was unconscious.

---

"You're Mijung?"

"Do _not_ talk to me right now."

Mijung scowled, checking Yutrin's pulse. "He's gotten himself sick again. By the gods, I _told_ him to rest for the night." She gingerly picked him up, still reluctant to touch a goblin, and lay him out on his bed, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead to feel for a fever. "Yes. He's sick again. By the gods, Yutrin, you had better not get a fever again when the dwarf has only just woken up. You are the only cleric here."

The goblin curled up in a fetal position, shaking feverishly in his unconscious state, and blood oozed from the back of his head. Mijung sighed, pulling open the drawers with the few medical supplies they had been supplied.

The weird woman at the fireplace hadn't looked up once. She just kept poking her fire as usual.

"You're nursing him."

Mijung looked back at the dwarf, soaking a cloth in the water basin next to Yutrin's bed. "He dealt with _me_ when I was sick and moaning for my husband. He had no reason to." _And I'm a part of a species that's been trying to kill him since birth, so he had special reasons _not_ to. _"The least I can do is return the favor."

"You're touching him."

"I know." Mijung gently dabbed at the back of the goblin's head. "It's not that I want to, it's a simple matter of the fact he's going to be hurt if I don't."

The dwarf was silent for a while. Mijung wiped the blood away, soaking the dirty cloth in water and taking out bandages, wrapping the goblin's shaved head gently. She wondered quietly. Yutrin had been right to be afraid of the dwarf and his ax. And she saw how he flinched every time they touched each other, even if it was just an accidental brush of the shoulder. He was terrified of her.

Mijung liked to think that she was open-minded and accepting of everyone, yet she felt disgust for the person who had tenderly cared for her when she had most needed it.

Her husband might have killed a few of this goblin's relatives. Had a goblin ever hurt Soon or herself? No, but…

He hadn't done anything to her personally to earn her disgust. He didn't deserve to be attacked in this place. Mijung couldn't help but feel angry at herself—touching and caring for him shouldn't be a chore. It should be just as much of a gift as she considered touching and caring for other humans and elves and dwarves and halflings and gnomes to be.

"Are you Soon's wife?"

Mijung froze, her thoughts imploding where they sat. She snapped around, forgetting Yutrin momentarily and staring at the dwarf, eyes wide. "You know my husband?!"

"You… you were unmade by the Snarl! You're the reason he went to seal the rifts!" The dwarf came forward a little, eyes just as wide. "I… I thought that I was unmade too! I've been traveling with him since you died!"

"I'm not dead! I've only been here."

"Well, that's news to me. Your soul is supposed to be destroyed."

Mijung ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. "No. No! I still exist! I was just with my husband in the elven forests and I saw a hole in space… and… and then I woke up here with a terrible fever and Yutrin was tending to me even though he was obviously sick himself."

At the mention of his name, Mijung remembered that she was supposed to be taking care of a patient. She turned again, making sure the bandaging was on correctly before checking his breathing rate. "We can't have been here for longer than a few months. Soon must be so worried…"

"He's broken up, more like! He thinks you don't exist anymore!"

"Well, we shall simply need to go and tell him that he is wrong once we are all well." Mijung stood straight, frowning tightly, and wrapped Yutrin up in his blanket. "But in the meantime, you must tell me all about what my husband has done in my absence and why he believes that I am non-existent. It seems like there is a story."

"A long one."

"We have until Yutrin wakes up, when I need to try to make sure he isn't so scared of you that he stops sleeping again. Tell me your name and let's start."

The dwarf fingered the slice at his arm, frowning at Yutrin, still a little ashamed-looking. "My name's Kraagor. Get yourself comfortable. This story is longer than a few months."

---

Yutrin hadn't woken by the time Kraagor's story was finished. Mijung had many questions, especially regarding how long the dwarf claimed it had been since her 'death,' but Yutrin's worrying state of health took precedence. The few times he opened his eyes, they were glazed with fever and he would murmur for someone named 'Jalyamir.'

When Mijung first heard the name, she frowned a little. Her reaction was the same each time he murmured it.

Kraagor watched Mijung with interest while she cared for the delirious goblin, mouth fixed in a frown and eyes never shifting. She didn't ask him to stop. She hated herself for it, but she was glad for non-goblinoid company.

It wasn't long until Kraagor's illness forced him to sleep. Mijung was left with the odd fire-tending woman and two unconscious patients.

Yutrin continued to moan for Jalyamir and Mijung dwelled on Soon.

The woman tending the fire looked up, eyes glowing like coals, and the barest hint of a smile graced her lips.

---

Yutrin's return to health was slow. Mijung didn't know why—how could he get so sick again so fast?—but it wasn't for a long time until he opened his eyes again and saw her.

"Mijung…"

Mijung turned around to see him, crossing her arms, scowling and immediately launching into what she had wanted to say since the moment he fainted. "I told you to sleep. Did you listen to me? No. You did not. Now you see why you should do what I tell you to."

Yutrin blinked, then his chest shook a little, a laugh escaping, followed by several more. "Mijung!" He tried to sit up, but he was hit with a dizzy spell that forced him to lie back down again. "I'm the cleric here!"

"And everyone knows that clerics make for horrible patients." Mijung sat on her bed, trying to get closer to eye-level. "The dwarf is asleep again, so you don't have to be worried. His name's Kraagor, and he has quite a story."

Yutrin frowned warily, instinctively drawing away.

"Look, I know that you were right to be afraid and to want that ax taken away. I was wrong." Mijung's smile faded and she ran a hand through her hair. "But he told me that he won't attack you again. That's the best guarantee you will get until you get to know him more."

Yutrin was quiet, eyes still wary.

Mijung sighed in exasperation, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "I know that you have reasons to be scared of him, but could you ignore it until we get better? He's hardly in a position to try to kill you!"

"It doesn't matter if he's in a position to kill me. You don't know what it's like to have every species but your own try to kill you on sight."

"He's out with a fever! He can't hurt you!"

Yutrin seemed to shut down. He curled up in a fetal position, glaring at his knees. "It doesn't matter. Fear is a defense mechanism. It doesn't need to be rational." He turned so his back was to her. "It's better to be safe than dead."

"Oh wi—"

"Mijung, please don't go on." He curled up into a tighter ball, blocking her out. "I'd prefer it if you just told me that story of his."

Mijung frowned, huffing softly. She lay down in her bed and decided to fall asleep instead of sharing anything with the goblin.

---

It was a long time before all three of them were well at the same time.

Yutrin was noticeably wary of Kraagor, a favor the dwarf gladly returned. The presence of Kraagor seemed to push Yutrin and Mijung closer. Where they used to hold painfully civil conversation and avoided any other sort of contact, Yutrin now looked to her as a protection from Kraagor. He kept close to her, a condition she quickly learned to accept.

Yutrin was scared of humans, yes, but he was less afraid of unarmed human women than of ax-wielding barbarian dwarves.

But despite the racial rifts between them, they had all agreed that they wanted to leave when they were healthy.

---

Kraagor stood from his bed, lumbering towards his 'companions.' Yutrin ducked behind Mijung instinctively. The woman didn't even flinch anymore, resigned as she was to her fate as a glorified meat shield.

"How are you all feeling?"

"Like going back home and bashing some skulls." Kraagor happily put his recently reacquired ax on his back.

"What about you, Yutrin?"

"I'm much better, thank you. You?"

"I'm fine."

Yutrin warily edged away from Mijung, keeping an eye on Kraagor, and slowly approached the non-human woman at the hearth. The human and the dwarf watched him curiously, waiting for him to finish what they all needed him to do.

The non-human woman looked up, eyes glowing softly and gold radiance rippling in her skin. Her lips turned up ever so slightly in a smile, but she seemed… sad.

"I want to thank you for helping us."

The woman cocked her head slightly, light rippling again.

"We have to go back home now, but we'll repay our debt somehow, someday."

The woman smiled, then slowly stood up, her gold-colored dress swirling at her feet like fire. She made a gesture towards the window, encouraging them to open the curtains.

Yutrin frowned. They had been here for so long, yet they hadn't thought to look out the window once? They were sicker than he had thought.

Mijung frowned, apparently realizing the same thing Yutrin was, and walked to the window, throwing the curtains open.

She gasped in shock and jumped away, and the men in the room backed up, eyes widening.

Outside, there was nothing but writhing cords of purple, red, and blue reality, snapping and whipping at the air, roaring. They all knew what they were seeing.

This was the Snarl.

"I have someone I think you should speak with."

Everyone spun around, eyes focusing on the non-human woman. She smiled and slowly walked out of the room.

The hearth fire she had so loyally tended went out with her departure.


	3. Chapter 3

The non-human woman was the only source of light in the hall. Her skin illuminated the marble walls, throwing the odd designs on them in relief. Mijung and Yutrin curiously tried to look closer at the pictures, but the non-human woman was moving too fast. The most they could see were images of a woman shooting several girls with arrows, a man stealing a girl away to the underground, and a big man eating newborn babies with a crying woman watching. (Both Yutrin and Mijung jerked away with a gagging sound from that.)

Mijung frowned, jogging a little to keep up with the non-human woman, questions bubbling and jumping to the tip of her tongue. "You know Common, then?"

"Well, it is not so common a language if I do not speak it." The non-human woman glanced at the walls wistfully, her mouth turned up in a melancholy smile. "I do not speak your language and you do not speak mine. It is by virtue of my cousin that we can communicate."

"She cast a spell or something?" Kraagor asked, gravelly voice grinding against Yutrin's sensitive eardrums.

"You can say that."

Mijung frowned, looking back at where they had come from, unable to see through the darkness. It shifted as though it were alive, tentacles eating away at the walls and floor, and the woman instinctively flinched towards Yutrin, a motion he imitated. "Who are you? Where are we?"

The non-human woman kept walking, pace never faltering, and it felt as though they were going down a hallway that lasted for a hundred years. Yutrin's and Mijung's ears both perked a little, eager to hear the answers to the questions they had been asking themselves since they woke from their fevers, but Kraagor didn't seem too interested. He kept on fingering his ax and looking around with almost paranoid frequency to see if something was about to leap out of the dark and eat them alive. "Who am I? I am many things. I am your home. I am your hearth. I am your hope. I am your inner fire and strength." The woman slowly came to a dark doorway, smiling. "As for where we are… we are still attempting to define it."

"Define it?"

She smiled, turning to face them, her illumination not going past the doorway. "It was once the first world, the old world. Now? It is the death of freedom and the graveyard of the gods."

She was still smiling, but her skin was losing light and becoming increasingly ashen. Yutrin made a motion to touch her and see what was wrong, but she shrugged him off. "In fear, the home dies soon after wisdom and order. It dies with hope."

Yutrin frowned in confusion. "You're not making sense. Listen, I'm a cleric, I think I can—"

The non-human woman turned away. "Your god is young. New. I feel his power settled in your veins, yet I have never known him before." She slowly reached into the doorway, her hand disappearing in the darkness as if eaten. "Even if he himself were here, he is not strong enough to help us." She stepped inside, turning her head just enough so that they could see her eyes, fire burning in the sockets. "At the same time, he is not strong enough to hinder us."

She dissolved in the darkness.

Yutrin blinked in confusion, backing away slowly from the door, eyes wide. He swallowed hard, an instinctive sense of overwhelming fear closing his throat, and he murmured a few prayers to the Dark One in Goblin to calm himself down. "Where…" He glanced back. "Mijung, I don't think we should go in there."

Kraagor warily took out his ax, keeping his grip tight, and Yutrin flinched away, eyeing the blade with fear. Mijung crossed her arms, absently rubbing her stomach and staring at the door. "Kraagor, don't draw weapons. If anyone here wanted to hurt us, they would have already done it."

Her words had more meaning than she led on. Yutrin edged towards her gratefully, still staring at Kraagor's ax.

Kraagor looked down at his weapon, then at Yutrin and Mijung. With a huff, he glared at them both darkly, provoking a frown of confusion from Mijung, and he put his ax away. "Goblin, you go through the door first—make sure it's safe."

Yutrin shrunk a little, glancing at the dark door fearfully. Mijung puffed up, preparing to deliver a cold response to the dwarf, but the goblin nodded nervously, making a small gesture for her to stop. "Someone has to go in, Mijung."

She looked at him, scowling, and her pupils dilated to accommodate the lack of light. "Not you. You're a healer. You can't fight if there's something dangerous in there."

"Well you don't have any spell books here, so you can't protect yourself." Yutrin held out his hands, letting his claws speak for themselves for a moment. "I can leave some damage if I need to. And if anyone's going to go, Kraagor needs to stay to protect the remaining spell caster. I'll be back soon, okay?"

He edged towards the door, fear attempted to be hidden in his eyes. Mijung started forward.

"Yutrin, wait, stop! We don't know—"

The goblin was already through the doorway.

Darkness swallowed him up.

Mijung stopped short, eyes wide, hands loose at her sides. She waited for Yutrin to come back out like he told her he would.

Five minutes passed.

He didn't come back out.

Mijung went forward slowly, touching the edge of the doorway. Her muscles tensed. She looked back at Kraagor, her dark eyes furious and her fists clenched. "He might be dead, Kraagor."

Kraagor crossed his arms. "He died with honor and bravery. I'm sure he'll be happy in his god's afterlife." He looked back down the dark hall. "Maybe there is another way out back there…"

Mijung's mouth fell open. Kraagor looked at her horrified expression, then gave an irritated sigh.

"For my leader's sake, I'm keeping his wife safe. If that requires sacrificing a goblin, so be it." Kraagor came forward slowly, frowning at the darkness. "If he's dead, then we need to find a way out of here. If we are inside the Snarl, then no one knows what's happened to us. It looks like we're on our own."

Mijung stared at him in shock.

"Mijung, we need to hurry and search for a way out."

"Kraagor?"

The dwarf looked up at her, frowning impatiently but unwilling to be blatantly rude to a lady.

Mijung slowly crossed her arms, thrusting her hips out. "I don't know how you and my husband relate to each other. I know for a fact that he does not treat his comrades as he treats me, so I wouldn't know what he does in battle." Mijung lifted her chin, eyes blazing. "But, regardless of what Soon has permitted or not in his party, I should tell you something about myself: I will never accept the sacrifice of an innocent life to save my own. Yutrin hasn't done anything wrong by either of us and may be trapped or hurt. Do what you want—I'm going after him."

"Mijung—!"

But she had already zipped into the darkness.

Kraagor stayed stiff in shock for a moment, then looked up at the ceiling. "I see why you of all people would like her so much, Soon." He sighed and then ran through the doorway himself.

---

Mijung was on the ground in a fetal position. Cold dripped on her skin like liquid, rippling, and it was almost as if tiny hands inside of her were reaching out, pulling her hair until she was falling into the floor and the world was a whirlpool around her.

The woman curled up tighter, scrunching her face against the dizziness, her back and abdomen aching worse than usual, her breath coming in short gasps. She waited for a while.

She sat up, rubbing her head, and looked around, clinging to the floor to keep the odd drugged feeling away. "Yutrin?"

"Mijung?" There was a soft scrabbling sound. "Mijung!"

The scrabbling came closer. Mijung could feel the familiar yet unknown presence settling besides her, close enough for breath to tickle against her neck. "Mijung…" There was a hesitation, then a clawed hand tentatively touched her shoulder. "Mijung, are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine." Mijung stifled the urge to flinch away from the goblin's touch. A part of her was terrified and wanted to slap him for making her feel that way. Another part of her wanted to curl up against him, if only to remind herself that this crushing darkness wasn't without company. "What about you?"

"I'm fine."

The darkness swelled and dissolved.

They were suddenly sitting on carved marble. Light came from the stones themselves, but it was a flickering and uneven light, as though it were fire. The doorway of nothing was in front of them, and in its mouth, Kraagor stood with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. Both Yutrin and Mijung found themselves with the feeling of doing something wrong. Only Yutrin knew what it was.

The goblin jerked his hand away from the human's shoulder, looking down.

"Get up. Both of you."

They mutely did as he said, backing away from each other for Kraagor to stand between them.

Yutrin rubbed his arm gently, sneaking a small embarrassed glance at Mijung before looking away shame-faced. Mijung didn't notice. She coughed, smoothing out her clothes before looking at Kraagor, a small scowl on her face. "So you came."

"I told you. I owe it to Soon to keep his wife safe." Kraagor arched an eyebrow, frowning, and Mijung got the vague feeling that he was implying something deeper than he was saying.

She shrugged it off, still scowling. "Well, I'm not a child. I can handle myself."

Kraagor gave a terse nod, looking disdainfully at Yutrin before looking around. "Where is that woman who took us here?"

The marble around them trembled, then started to break apart. The blocks under them fell away to darkness. Kraagor tried to jump away, but he swiftly fell. Mijung shrieked and started to fall, but Yutrin backed to the last of the solid floor and grabbed her hand, shrieking in incomprehensible Goblin. For a moment, Mijung clung to his hand.

The floor under Yutrin crumbled.

They fell.


	4. Chapter 4

_"Jaly, we're going to get caught…"_

_The goblin girl looked back at him, black hair moving gently in the breeze, tusks gleaming with a smile. "Yutrin, don't be such a mouse. The elves don't have a settlement for miles."_

_Sun filtered through the leaves, making the dewdrops on the grass sparkle like diamonds. They came to a stream with a small trail of stepping stones through it. The goblin girl hopped to one rock, then to the next._

_"But the humans have a watchtower nearby!"_

_She hopped to the next rock, her feet molding easily despite the slippery moss breathing softly on the stone. "They don't care about two little goblins on the stream. There's, what, five humans there in all?" She spun, the water swelling so that it almost had the rock she stood on submerged, making the mossy flutter underneath the surface like a trapped fish. She was walking on water. "Are you coming or not?"_

_Yutrin hesitated, visions of being brutally attacked by hulking humans with big round teeth and monstrous multi-colored eyes dancing in his mind._

_The goblin girl smiled at him._

_He jumped to the first rock._

---

"Hey, wake up."

Something poked him in the side.

"Seriously. We've been waiting for gods-know how long for some answers."

Another poke.

"It's hard to get answers from you if you're unconscious."

Poke.

"Why don't we just wake them up again?"

"We're supposed to keep from using power for little things, remember? We don't want to blow their heads off by accident."

Poke.

Yutrin groaned softly, curling up in pain.

"Oh, right. I should probably do something about those broken bones. Hey, sis, next time, why don't you to _not_ destroy the floor to get them here?"

"You were the one who did that."

"No, you see, when I pin the blame on you, you're supposed to take it."

There was a frustrated sigh and a hand brushed against Yutrin's forehead. Power that felt vaguely familiar yet overwhelmingly foreign rushed through his blood, rising to his skin and sinking into his bones, mending the sources of his pain and smoothing out his body. He was pulled out of a pain-induced hallucination he didn't want to leave. The smiling face of a goblin girl was fading from his sight. His heart ached. Jalyamir…

"WAKE UP!"

Yutrin jerked, forcing his eyes open and squinting at whoever was talking to him.

Two non-human humans. Neither were the woman who nursed him. One was a man with bronze skin and hair the color of dark honey, eyes the same shade twinkling amusedly. A crown of laurels was fixed on his head, giving a shocking level of green for someone whose color palate seemed to only consist of shades of gold.

At his side, there was a woman, sharp contrast from her companion. Her skin was at vampiric levels of pale (Yutrin discreetly felt his neck for holes just to make sure) and her hair looked like it had been snipped from complete darkness and formed into strands. Her eyes were night blue, her pupil almost lost in the iris, and they focused on him with an uncomfortable intensity.

Both of them glowed with the inner radiance of the hearth-tender, but unlike her, they had bows and arrows on their backs and the air of danger around them. Yutrin's heart started to race. He was the prey again. They the hunters. They would take draw their weapons and skewer him where he sat, and he wouldn't be able to do a thing.

Somewhere inside himself, he could tell that he wouldn't stand a chance against them.

"Calm down. We're not going to kill you." The man straightened, giving an extraordinarily dashing smile, his teeth gleaming like perfect pearls and his inhuman muscles rippling under his skin. "Yet. You know, sis, I think that you're the one who does this to people. You know, a ripped girl. They think you're going to drag them off and rape them Amazon-style."

The woman scowled at the man, straightening up herself. Yutrin was shocked to find that he found these non-human humans attractive despite their lack of tusks. That was weird. It wasn't even the gentle, glowing beauty of the hearth-tender. This was stark and wild.

He swallowed hard.

"Where's Mijung?"

He considered asking after Kraagor, but he didn't like the dwarf much. But he was a patient. He really should ask.

"And the dwarf?"

"They're still unconscious."

Yutrin swallowed nervously, standing up tentatively and backing away. "Where are they?"

"I think that it's our turn to ask questions." The non-human man grinned, merriment looking more and more fake with the dangerous gleam shimmering in his eye, and slipped forward, wrapping a dominating arm around Yutrin's shoulders. The cleric's skin felt like it was being burnt where the non-human touched it, but he didn't jerk away. If he moved away, the non-human would get angry.

Instead, he swallowed the whimpers of pain in his throat and shrunk a little. "Can I just make sure that they're not dying? I'm a cleric, it'll only take a moment…"

"Hey, I'm a healer too, kid." The non-human man's smile became more dangerous. "Don't think you're better than me. That right there would be hubris, and I don't like hubris in little green rats."

He snatched Yutrin's ear, skin burning the sensitive green flesh, and pulled it hard enough to elicit a yelp of pain. "Got that?"

"Yes! I got it!" Yutrin squirmed, keeping some of the more pathetic sounds down, and the non-human man let his ear go with a smile.

"Alright, then. What are you? Last time I checked, there weren't any green people running around." The non-human man's grin started getting dangerous again. "And care to tell me what that god of yours is up to?"

His hand zipped out, snapping Yutrin's holy symbol from his neck in one swift movement, twirling it in the air to reflect the light of the marble temple they were in.

Something in Yutrin jumped at attention. "Give that back!" He reached out and snatched the symbol from the non-human man, holding it close to his chest and letting the reassuring warmth run through him. "You have no right to bully me like this!"

…Then his brain caught up with him and realized, as the non-human man's eyes narrowed, that he had just screwed himself over.

He closed his eyes and got ready for death.

"You little green rat."

The man grabbed his ear in a strong fist, burning and yanking simultaneously. Yutrin stifled a shout of pain, tightening his grip on his holy symbol and reflexively grabbing the man's hand, digging his claws in the burning skin.

The non-human's face twisted in an ugly expression, eyes glowing, voice dark and smooth. "I have the right to what I want, when I want. And I don't like little upstart rats disrespecting me." The non-human man twisted Yutrin's ear, getting closer and closer to tearing it off completely. "I should make sure that you can't do that again."

"Brother."

The non-human man looked up at the non-human woman, scowling.

"He has answers."

The man paused, then let the cleric's ear go. Yutrin stifled a sigh of relief and skipped back a few steps.

"Alright then, rat. You're not human. Neither is that short hairy guy you fell in here with. What are you?"

Yutrin shifted nervously, tying his holy symbol back around his neck. "I… I'm a goblin. He's a dwarf."

"Really? Huh. They changed the design." The non-human man was smiling again, teeth practically glowing. "Tell me what a goblin is. I'm dying to know."

Yutrin stifled the urge to ask how anyone could not know what a goblin was. He liked his ears firmly on his head, thank you very much.

"I… well… we're green," he started lamely. "We have tusks. And… and pointy ears." He reached up, fingering his burnt ear and wincing. "We're sort of on the lowest rung, if you know what I mean. We all live on the worst land for some reason. And apparently, we're supposed to be evil from birth to death. Most of the other races like hunting us down and killing us." He rubbed his burnt arm nervously. "It's… it's not that pleasant…"

The non-human humans glanced at each other, frowning.

"Brother, didn't Thor talk about creating a race solely for our favored warriors to kill?"

Yutrin's ears perked curiously.

"Yeah. Odin too. And Pig. And Rooster. And Tiger. And Dragon. And the whole Western Pantheon…" The non-human man scratched his head, frowning. "Big Sister shot them down, though. She got Father and the rest of the oldest behind her and shut down the whole idea. I mean, it _was_ pretty stupid to make a race of sapient beings just to be target practice… I mean, you're going to piss a lot of people off that way, and they're the ones who give us power and belief…"

"I guess that they just went ahead with it when she was gone."

Yutrin's eyes narrowed suspiciously, studying the non-humans closer, but he was still too frightened to say anything.

"Then what's _your_ god, rat? It only feels like one."

The goblin winced, involuntarily jumping to answer the question. "He is the only god in our pantheon." Yutrin's hands automatically went to his holy symbol. "The Dark One. He united the goblinoid people like no one else. He protects us when no other god will."

The non-human woman twisted a tendril of black hair around her finger. "He must be young, Brother. I can sense it."

"Well, then I guess it doesn't matter. We don't have any issues with him, and even if we did, it's not like he'd be powerful enough to do anything."

The non-humans frowned at each other for a while, and Yutrin allowed hope for his freedom filter into his mind.

He hesitated to speak.

"May I see Mijung and the dwarf now?"

The non-human man absently snapped his fingers without looking towards the cleric.

There was a soft groaning sound among the debris scattered across the temple floor. Yutrin's burnt ears perked and he immediately scrambled towards it, climbing over the broken chunks of marble to see a small white-clad body in a fetal position behind the rock. "Mijung!"

He slid down the rock, going to her side and checking for any wounds. "Mijung?"

"Yutrin?" Mijung cracked an eye open, sitting up with a little difficulty. "Ow… what happened to you?"

Yutrin self-consciously fingered his burnt ears, hand, and shoulders, wincing with every touch. "Nothing. Just don't let anyone touch you directly. What about you? Did you break anything?"

Mijung checked herself over. "A couple of bruises, but that's the worst of it. Where's Kraagor?"

"I'm here."

Yutrin spun around, reflexively jumping away when the dwarf climbed over a slab of marble and joined them, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What happened to you?"

Green fingers went to burnt skin again. "Nothing."

"Good rat."

Everyone jumped in surprise, looking up sharply to see the non-humans sitting on a giant slab of marble they were huddled under. That was weird. Yutrin had to struggle over the debris, and the non-humans were able to climb the slab in less than a moment.

The pale woman was scowling, eyes boring into the misfits like lasers. She was scanning them the same way Yutrin had always seen humans and elves scan him. She was measuring her prey. Preparing for the hunt. "Brother, wouldn't the dwarf do well for our half-brother?"

"Mmm. The human would have been nice for our aunt."

"Would have been."

"We'll have to make due with the kids."

The man leaned forward, eyes glowing, face looking vaguely like a really bad mask.

Kraagor was the first to realize something was very, very wrong.

The two non-humans straightened up, sandals molding perfectly to their feet, but Kraagor was already in front of Mijung and Yutrin, taking out his ax and provoking a startled yelp from the goblin. Yutrin's instinct as prey was tripped and his muscles tensed to run, eyes wide.

He should run. He should run away and let the human and dwarf deal with the non-humans. He was a goblin. They all would kill him if he stayed. The human and dwarf had a chance.

His feet wouldn't move.

The non-human man's face darkened and the non-human woman's eyes sharpened, a hunter zeroing on her prey.

"I suggest you put down the weapon, dwarf."

"Goblin, get Mijung out. If I hear word of you leaving her to die or hurting her, I swear that I'm going to feed you to these upstarts."

Mijung bristled furiously at the implications of that order, opening her mouth to speak, but the non-humans got there first.

"_UPSTARTS?!_"

The marble under them cracked and the air got hot, the two non-humans furiously drawing their bows and arrows, eyes glowing like fire. "Your disrespect shall be the death of you, dwarf!"

That was when Yutrin's instincts fully kicked in. He barely had the presence of mind to grab Mijung's arm before turning tail and running away from the temple into the dark landscape beyond. The woman let out a shout of protest, clawing at his hand, but he didn't pause. He ran like there was a band of angry humans and elves behind. There was an animalistic roar and he could see his and Mijung's shadows stretch over the barren ground, the light from behind them was so bright. Kraagor was dead.

He kept running.


	5. Chapter 5

"Stop! Stop!"

The hard dirt ground had jagged pieces of twisted metal and broken glass jutting from it, giving the land the appearance of having teeth and attempting to eat them. Decrepit, abandoned houses were falling apart around them, splintered wood sticking out from the broken roofs and walls, but the runners could hardly see them. The black sky above was devoid of a light source save for the stars.

"We have to go back!"

Yutrin mindlessly tightened his grip and kept running, zipping through the earth's teeth, praying desperately the whole way, sparing breath only to murmur frantically to his god.

"WE HAVE TO GO BACK!"

They tumbled into one of the more intact houses. Yutrin let Mijung go, slamming the door shut behind them and going still, trying to catch his breath.

"YOU COWARDLY BASTARD!"

Mijung turned and punched him squarely in the jaw.

Yutrin tried to recoil, but he was caught between her and the door.

"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!"

The woman punched his face again before beating his chest with her fists. Yutrin flinched, pressing his back up against the door, and his heart beat increased. He tried to remind himself that Mijung wouldn't kill him. He wasn't so convinced, though.

His arms stayed loose at his sides.

"HE'S DEAD! HE'S DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!"

She slammed her fist against his jaw again before shoving him up against the door, turning away sharply with a furious shout and sitting down on a bed that was in the middle of the room, bending over and letting out a frustrated growl. "All because you're a damn dishonorable coward… Kraagor, _my husband's friend and comrade_, is dead because you're a dishonorable coward…"

Silence reigned.

Yutrin took a moment to catch his breath, rubbing the blood from his mouth slowly, wincing when his hand came against a growing bruise on his jaw. His throat was raw. Kraagor wasn't with them.

Kraagor was probably killed.

Yutrin had run away and left him.

The goblin swallowed hard, looking down and shaking gently with exhaustion. Blood was pooling from his feet, and Mijung had left bloody footprints on the floor. They must have shredded themselves on the glass and metal outside without realizing it.

He went down on his knees, keeping his throbbing feet from touching the ground with a wince, and silently crawled to Mijung, timidly taking one of the feet hanging off the edge of bed in hand and delicately picking out jagged pieces of metal and glass. She winced, hissing in pain and fury, and swiped at his burnt ear.

He flinched away with flares of pain shooting through his ear and face, trying to keep his whimpers down his throat, and he lightly fingered his holy symbol before crawling back and pulling the pieces out of the woman's foot gently. This time, Mijung didn't strike him.

Blood stained his hands, and he wasn't sure how much of it was Mijung's. He ran the pad of his finger along her foot, feeling for any other foreign objects. When he was satisfied that there were none left, he swept up the sharp things in his palm, wincing when some of it cut his skin, and put them in the corner were they were unlikely to step until he could dispose of it all properly.

He made a furtive glance around the room, looking for any source of clean water or bandages in vain before biting his sleeve, using his sharp teeth to make a tear before ripping three strips from it. He used the first to clean the silent woman's cuts as best he could, praying silently to the Dark One that none of them would be infected, before he wrapped them gently in the last two strips.

He scanned Mijung for any other wounds, avoiding looking at her face, and with a wince he saw that he had gripped her arm while running so hard that his claws had torn through her flesh.

He tentatively held her wrist, half expecting her to hit him again, and tore another strip from his sleeve, cleaning and wrapping the gouges in her arm. The fire crackled gently in the background as Yutrin finished with the claw marks, flinching away immediately, trying to avoid any other slaps and starting to pull out glass and metal lodged in his own feet.

Wait…

Yutrin frowned.

They hadn't put on a fire.

Mijung seemed to realize this at the same time as Yutrin as they both looked to the lit hearth in panic. Had they been followed?

The non-human woman who had healed them poked the fire gently. "It gets cold at night. You will need fire. Your hearths will burn any time you are home, so long as hope still lives."

She looked up and smiled mildly, but her face was sunken and ashen. It looked as though illness had taken her by a storm.

Mijung stood up immediately, inflamed. "What the hell is going on?! Where are we?! Who are you?! What happened to Kraagor?! I'm sick and tired of being dragged around like a puppet without any answers!"

The non-human woman leaned tiredly against the wall, the inner radiance that made her glow diminished. "So many questions. In this world, there are few answers."

"Then answer them!"

The non-human looked up at Mijung, ember eyes glowing softly, before she smiled sadly. "You will have a visitor tonight. Do not offend her—she has been quicker to curse mortals as of late." She looked back at the hearth. "I am called many things, but the gods call me Hestia."

"What's with this talk of gods?" Mijung frowned, bristling. "Everyone has said something or other about it!"

"Because that is what we are, daughter."

"What?"

The non-human looked up at the wall, closing her eyes. "I do not think that you have ever heard of us. We worked with the original gods on the first world, this world. But we are more powerful than they. They were angry. We were betrayed."

She opened her eyes again, looking to Mijung. "I do not ask that you believe me. I ask that you listen."

A thin silver chain around Mijung's neck that hadn't been there before gleamed in the light. She seemed to become aware of it only at that moment. She quickly looked down, pulling a small amulet from inside her shirt and staring at it. It was a crossroads symbol carved into a piece of obsidian.

"What…?"

Yutrin frowned suspiciously at the amulet, but said nothing.

"Daughter, you are three weeks pregnant by your husband, Soon Kim."

Mijung looked back up at the non-human, pupils retracting to tiny pinpoints and teeth clenching. Yutrin let out a surprised sound from his throat, but quickly shut up again.

"I haven't been with Soon in months!" Mijung shook her head sharply. "That's impossible."

"No, it is not." The non-human straightened up, walking to the window and gesturing out at the stars. "In this world, Cronos, the lord of time, and Hades, the lord of the dead, are asleep. Time and death no longer have significance, meaning, or existence for as long as they rest. You were pregnant when you came here, and so you remain."

"That makes no sense!"

The non-human woman looked back at Mijung. "You do not have to believe me now. If you keep the amulet on, then you shall see the truth for yourself. It will allow your pregnancy to continue through its stages at a normal rate. It will allow you and the unborn to age. If you give birth to one child, give it the amulet until it has become a young adult, in which case, take it away and wait until another person must age. If you give birth to two, snap the amulet in half and give them both a piece."

"What?!"

"Artemis and Apollo hunt you for your unborn. You are under my and Hecate's protection for as long as you stay here in the wilderness, but you will soon need to leave it."

"This makes no sense! Start making sense! Who are Artemis and Apollo?! The people who we just ran from? Who's Hecate?! Where are we?! Are you all insane or are you trying to drive me crazy?!"

"It will make sense soon enough."

The hearth flared and she was gone.

---

Mijung scowled darkly at the wall, obviously barely tolerating it as Yutrin carefully felt her stomach. The goblin tried to ignore the fear and awkwardness running through his veins and he concentrated on whether or not he could find any swelling.

He swallowed hard when his hands found a definite firmness in the right area.

"I think she's right, Mijung," Yutrin said softly, pulling his hands away. "Have you had your period since you came here?"

The woman's face went red, but luckily, she recognized the medical relevancy of the question. "No. I wasn't paying attention to that, and I didn't realize that I had been missing them."

Yutrin resisted the urge to swallow again. "I can't tell for sure without a spell, but if you keep that thing on and you still don't have a period, then she was telling the truth."

Mijung's glare intensified. "She wasn't telling the truth. None of this makes sense. I can't be pregnant, and if I am, Soon can't be the father. I haven't been with him for months and I haven't slept with anyone since we parted."

"It's true that none of this makes sense, but if it hasn't made sense up until now, then it's possible that time doesn't flow right here."

Mijung made a jerking motion with her hand and Yutrin flinched back, expecting a slap, but the woman didn't strike him. Her glare bore a hole through his face, however. She hadn't forgotten about Kraagor.

He hadn't either.

"I…" Yutrin looked away, rubbing the back of his head. "We'll need to find someplace to get food and water. It looks like… Hestia?... handled our fire needs. I'll go try to find anything else."

Mijung glared at him before looking away. He could see what she was thinking just as clearly as if she had said it.

She hoped he would die out there.

Yutrin looked away, his ears drooping, and pulled off his shirt, ripping it in two and wrapping his still-bloody feet to protect them from any more sharp objects.

"I'll try to come back with food and water as fast as I can."

He was gone without her saying anything.

---

Yutrin thought he had known true fear when he had been hunted down by humans and elves alike, all out to murder him. He thought that he had known true fear when he stayed awake at night while all his brothers and sisters slept, trying to imagine which one of them would survive to adulthood and which would be slaughtered while they were still children.

But he hadn't known fear.

This was fear.

There was absolutely nothing around him. Just the stars in the sky and the barren ground below, and the few ghosts of lifeless houses.

This was truly aloneness. This was the graveyard of hope. This would be the death of his sanity if he didn't have Mijung to go back to.

He wasn't sure how long he had been hiking. He hadn't had to stop to eat, drink, sleep, or indulge in any other need since he had started, so he supposed that he couldn't have been gone long.

He shivered from the cold, wandering through the broken houses, reluctant to touch the wide-open barren landscape beyond the remains of the town. If a town was there, that meant that there at least used to be food and water. No one settled somewhere where people couldn't live.

The silence was unnatural. Towns should be bustling with life, but this… it was dead. He wanted to run to Mijung and hide behind her, but somehow, he figured that that wouldn't be taken well.

Besides, if she was pregnant, he would need to be the one to go out into this silence and find a way to provide for her. The baby wasn't his, so he didn't feel that goblin instinct to protect her, but he still refused to consider letting a pregnant woman, no matter the species, go out in a broken glass-filled environment to find her own food.

That didn't make him any less uneasy.

There was the soft rustling of wind through feathers. Yutrin looked up sharply, tensing, ready to zip into the shadows.

"You don't have to be so nervous."

Yutrin jumped with a yelp and started to run, slipping and falling on the ground. He shouted in pain, metal and glass digging deep in his flesh, and he scrambled to stand up.

A cold pair of hands cupped his face gently and he felt himself freeze.

"Don't be afraid."

Icy breath blew gently against his forehead, burying itself in his bones and making him tremble.

"We only want to see you for a moment."

Another pair of hands touched his head, their skin cooling his burns.

"So sleep. And dream."

There wasn't any use fighting it. Whatever these were, they were stronger than he was. And he didn't have the will to fight anymore.

Warmth ran through his tired veins and Yutrin slowly fell asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Mijung reclined on the bed, frowning at the door. She had no way of telling time or figuring how long Yutrin had been gone, but it felt like a while. He may be dead out there. Or lost. Or he could have just run away.

Guilt wriggled in her heart, burying itself and growing doubt. She hadn't been right to say all those things to him. He had been cowardly and dishonorable, but he had still done the smartest thing. They both were useless without their magic; they wouldn't have been able to help Kraagor anyway.

Of course, she was still angry. Maybe if Soon had been with them, they would have been okay. Her heart ached for her husband. Kraagor had been her last connection with him.

Water gathered at the back of her eyes, but she refused to acknowledge it. She had to stay strong. Yutrin certainly wouldn't, and if she really was pregnant, she'd have to hold out for the sake of her husband and her unborn child. She refused to admit to the possibility that she would never see Soon again, let alone the possibility of raising his child without him.

The saddest smile graced her lips. One wouldn't guess it because of his stern demeanor, but Soon had always wanted children. They had been trying for a while. How cruelly ironic it would be if she actually was pregnant and there was a possibility—Twelve Gods forbid—that he wouldn't be able to be there through the pregnancy and to hold his newborn before it grew into a toddler.

But Mijung wouldn't think about that.

She fingered the bandages on her arm, frowning. Well, Yutrin may have been a coward, but at least he was gentle and knew how to tend to the wounded. If they could stand each other long enough and he didn't abandon her and her unborn child the moment it looked like he would suffer for their presence, he could be very helpful through the pregnancy and birthing process.

She hugged herself, pulling the old but warm covers up, and dozed, keeping her ear out for the sound of a goblin opening the door.

"Mmmm… Wide hips… youth… health… Fauna's blessing… yes, you'll do just fine."

Mijung jerked awake, opening her mouth to scream, but something seemed to contain any sound she could make deep in her throat. Someone almost uncomfortably warm was pressed up against her back, fingering her bare stomach. She tried to swat them away, but her arms stayed still against the covers.

"I hope that Hecate is right about that green man, though. If she is not, I'm sure that Eros or a satyr will take the job. Maybe Robin Goodfellow. Or Dionysus—I'm sure he'll be fine with it…"

Mijung struggled to breathe, noting with panic that the air was choked with the smell of sex. What was going on?! Who was this person?! Why couldn't she move?!

The hand rubbing her stomach slipped down and Mijung tried to scream, but her indignant fury was frozen in her throat.

"I'm in a good mood, so I'll bless your children." Lips brushed against Mijung's neck slowly. She wanted to shout that only her husband was allowed to kiss and touch her like this, but her control was gone. The person holding her was in charge. "No one save for the ones they consider family will be able to resist their beauty and charm, regardless of anything else." She could hear the smirk in the person's voice and lips pressed against her neck again. "Their appeal will be irresistible, and it will be their greatest weapon when they have nothing left. They will never live a chaste life." The lips brushed slowly against Mijung's ear. "Isn't that a gift?"

The spell holding Mijung in place faded. She immediately squirmed away, standing up sharply, uncaring of her wounded feet, and glared fiercely at the bed.

A radiant blonde woman—easily the most beautiful being Mijung had ever laid eyes on—casually lay down, the covers lying at her hips lazily and her breasts exposed in the light of the fire.

"How dare you?! How _DARE_ you?! Who do you think you are?! Get out of here and never touch me again!"

The woman scowled darkly, the glow in her skin rippling. "That's no way to speak to someone who has just blessed your children."

"You call that a _blessing?!_" Mijung made a violent warding gesture with her hand. "Leave here! No one may touch me besides my husband!"

There was a long silence.

"Do you know who I am?" the woman asked, voice dangerously soft.

"I do not care! No man or woman may lie with me but Soon Kim!" Mijung made a move to hit the woman. "Be gone!"

She narrowed her eyes. "…You will pay for your disrespect, mortal."

The woman stood up from the bed, armor morphing on her otherwise naked body, blue eyes streaming fire. She turned from a lady of lovemaking to an oddly sexualized woman of war, the scent of blood, sweat, sex, and passion seeping through her pores. "I came to tell you that the gods have decided that you will produce our vassals. The child you carry will be born by decree of Hecate, and within two moons of that birth, you will be pregnant again, regardless of whether you willingly lie with a man or not. This cycle will continue until every living god has a vassal."

Mijung spat spitefully at the woman. "I will bear only Soon Kim's children and no one else's, be they god or man. Once I am back home, then you may have your cycle."

"You still think that you will see your husband again?!" The light from the fire dimmed and the woman's eyes glowed furiously, tangible power rearing up in her veins and armor becoming molten on her skin. "Foolish mortal! For your impudence, I will take that which you hold dearest. By the time your child is born, all you will have left of your memory of Soon Kim is the knowledge that you once had a husband in the other world. When that child hits puberty, you won't have even that."

Something snapped in the air and the woman glowed gold, and Mijung's ears popped.

Mijung stiffened, something cracking in her mind. She could see the image of Soon, the feel of his bare chest against her palm, the sound of his scarcely-heard chuckle just next to her ear… fading. It was all not as vibrant as it was a mere moment ago. It had only just started, but she knew what was happening—she was forgetting. The curse was taking effect.

This was a goddess before her.

This was a goddess, and she was stealing all Mijung had left of Soon.

"No! Stop!"

The goddess only glared.

Her hands went to her temples, squeezing them as if she could force the memories to stay inside. "No! Soon! SOON!"

The goddess sneered, voice dropping to a whisper. "If he ever comes to find you, he will only find a woman with a brood of bastards from monsters, fairies, and gods. You will not remember him. He will forsake your unfaithful heart."

"STOP!" Mijung squeezed her head tighter. "SOON!"

"And you won't remember to grieve." The woman walked towards the door. "This and nothing less is the price you pay for offending Aphrodite."

The goddess disappeared in a shower of gold sparkles. The fire in the hearth went out.

Mijung sat on the bed and started to cry in earnest.

She cried herself to sleep.

---

Yutrin stayed in a tight fetal position, squinting out into the darkness. Hands were stroking his naked body, but he wanted them to stop. He wasn't sure why, but he wanted them to stop.

"Yes… he would be a good vassal."

A hand ran down his chest while another stroked his face. "A good donor as well."

"He has to consent to this, though."

"Oh, he will."

Yutrin curled up in a tighter ball.

"He's awake."

"Child, would you like to be able to heal again?"

He uncurled without meaning to and a naked body pressed against his, uncomfortably hot. He squirmed, unwilling to make love to this person of darkness, but he didn't feel her do anything but touch him. "Would you?"

"…" Yutrin struggled with the fog of his mind for a while. "…Yes. Mijung needs it…"

"And she will get hurt eventually. And if you can't heal her, she'll die." The woman kissed his jaw line, brushing her lips against his throat. He squirmed uncomfortably, but he couldn't feel his hands to push her away. "I can give you your ability to heal, but you must pay a price for it."

The darkness shifted and the woman stroked his chest. "But you will not know that price until you take the deal. Will you?"

Yutrin shook, trying to see what was happening around him. "Where am I? Who are you?"

"Irrelevant." He could hear the smile in the woman's voice. "You can have your ability to heal back, but it comes at a price. Make a decision."

Yutrin tried to think, squirming, getting a sense that he was in grave danger. His instinct was to run and hide. But there was nowhere to hide, and he couldn't run. He was trapped. His nightmare.

His breath came in quick gasps and he started squirming desperately.

The woman simply chuckled softly, rubbing his sides and kissing his throat. "You have growth to undertake, Child."

"Life has inhibited it," a young child-like voice said right next to his ear, making him jump, "but it will have to come in this world."

"Will you take the deal or not?"

Yutrin trembled like a newborn cast out into the cold. Realization was dawning. These people, whoever was touching him, were not mortals.

He was in the presence of a goddess.

Yutrin let out a fearful squeak, trying to curl up but unable to.

"Mmm. You're not ready to make the choice."

Yutrin felt something cold wrap around his neck and he had to force himself to stop panicking. He couldn't run away. He couldn't run away.

"There will come a time to make a decision. You have a locket. When you or someone you care for is mortally wounded, if you want the ability to heal them, open it. You will pay a price, but whosoever needs healing then and afterwards will have it." Breath brushed against his ear. "But once you make the deal, you can never go back."

Lips, so hot and cold that they burned, pressed against his forehead. "I am patient. I can wait."

The darkness receded.

---

"Poor, poor child."

Mijung didn't want to wake up. She wanted to sleep forever until her husband came. She wanted to be in his arms. She wanted the color to come back to her memories. Already, she couldn't quite place his scent. Was it woody? Incense? Sweat? She couldn't really remember.

"The gods are cruel, I know, but I take pity on you."

A gentle hand rested on her face, and she felt the despair lift. She sobbed softly, cracking her eyes open to see who had visited her this time. She wanted to be alone.

A man with short black hair, achingly kind blue eyes, and a white suit sat beside her, a red stain at his abdomen and broken shackles clinging to his wrists. His hand was on her hair, and his face bespoke compassion and genuine caring of the likes Mijung had never seen before. She was reminded of going to her father after a nightmare as a child.

She resisted the urge to put her head in his lap and cry as she did with her Daddy.

"I cannot undo Aphrodite's curse, my child, but I can provide a way to fix the damage."

Mijung sat up slowly, daring to hope.

"I must warn you that it comes at a price."

The woman was trembling with grief, hugging herself and eyes getting wide. "What price?"

"You will not know until the time comes." The man—no, not human, but deity—shifted, eyes sad, but loving. "I will give you something that used to be a little box, but has been changed since then. This box was given to someone I cared very much about, and after she opened it, it was turned into two lockets. If you wear the locket I give you, your memories will flow into it, rather then go out into the world. The day you forget everything save for the fact you have a husband is the day you can open it and safely keep all your memory without fear of it fading. Open it before then, and your memories will be lost forever, but open it afterwards, and you will keep them despite what rages you put the gods in." He gently smoothed Mijung's hair back. "But you will have to pay a terrible price, my dear, and the child you bear may have to pay it as well."

The color drained from Mijung's face. "No… my child wouldn't have to…!"

The man's face was strained with pain, and he slowly took a locket, a half of a broken heart with carved designs on it, out of his breast pocket, lovingly putting it around Mijung's neck. "It is your choice. I am sorry, my child."

He was gone. The hearth was out. Mijung was alone.

She was damned to lose her memories, and the possible consequences of getting them back were too much to ever risk.

She buried her face in her hands and started to cry quietly.

The door creaked open.

"Mijung?"

There was a soft shuffle, and someone sat beside her on the bed. "Mijung…?"

Mijung looked up, ready to either start crying with complete abandon or start beating up whoever was there if it turned out to be another god.

She made a vague motion to wipe her eyes to preserve her dignity, but she just couldn't get herself to care.

It was a familiar green goblin. His chest was bare, sweat streaking it and making the hair stick to the skin, and a locket, the other piece of the broken heart that Mijung wore, hung at his neck. She didn't care to ask questions. She was too tired for questions. Too tired for anger. Too tired for anything but despair.

She really wasn't going home.

And she really was losing the last she had of her husband.

Despite his half-naked state and the fact she was supposed to be hating him, Mijung wrapped her arms around Yutrin's neck and buried her face there, starting to cry in earnest.

Yutrin stiffened a little, then slowly slipped his arms around her comfortingly, rubbing her back and resting his face in her hair.

She could feel his heart pounding against her breast. He was absolutely terrified.

He was still holding her. He was scared of her, but he was still holding her.

She kept crying for who-knew how long, and after that, she just clung to him.

After a while, she slowly let him go and lay back on the bed, drained and unwilling to worry about food or water or clothes. Yutrin started to crawl off the bed, presumably to sleep on the floor, but Mijung just grabbed his wrist.

He looked down at her hand hesitantly, then tugged. She didn't loosen her grip.

He tentatively crawled up besides her, slipping under the covers and lying down. They didn't touch each other, but they both dozed and eventually fell asleep.

The hearth started to crackle to life again.

From then on, neither one slept on the floor. No matter what argument they got into or how angry or frightened one was of the other, they never spent the night apart from one another.


	7. Chapter 7

"Two moons? _Two moons?!_"

Aphrodite scowled, crossing her arms and glaring defiantly. "She was impudent. She deserves to be punished."

"Oh, you haven't grown out of that 'I'm a god and therefore have the right to act like an overgrown _child_' mindset?"

Prometheus straightened out his white suit, glaring at the goddess in front of him, his broken shackles rattling. Aphrodite flared, her eyes glowing brightly. "You would do well you remember your place, Uncle!"

"And you would do well you remember yours," he said brusquely, waving his hand. "You acted like a spoiled infant and that young lady must pay." He paused. "That is something that I doubt that you will ever fully appreciate the significance of. But more consequentially for you, you're tantrum threatens her ability to reproduce. I did not design humanity to be able to simply pop children out like an assembly line!" He crossed his arms, his brow furrowed. "They need rest, regeneration, and time to spend with the infants they already have."

"She was disrespectful!"

"She is a confused, married, and pregnant young woman and you turned up in the night and began to molest her while dithering on about how her future offspring will all be sex symbols. You're lucky she only told you to leave and never come back." Prometheus frowned and paced around the broken temple, ignoring the frail breeze and the blood at his abdomen. "Just because you are now a war goddess does not mean you are invincible. You need a vassal, as does any other god that wishes to exist. Hecate will not allow you to threaten that with your childish antics."

"Hecate does not control me!"

Prometheus scowled at the sex goddess, staying silent for a long moment. "…If you do not want to bow to her rule, you do not have to. But she is the closest thing we have to wisdom anymore, even without the Crone. Destruction is in your path, Aphrodite, and we will not allow you to drag us down as well."

He turned away and started to fade. "Artemis is in charge of the moons, Aphrodite. Whenever the God Mother gives birth, the lunar cycle will slow. She will have at least eighteen regular moons to heal."

Fire danced in Aphrodite's hair and streamed from her eyes. "YOU DARE—"

"I will not allow your foolishness to doom us, and I will not allow you to force that woman to suffer just because you have an overly inflated sense of entitlement," Prometheus said softly, then he was gone.

"YOU'LL REGRET THIS, PROMETHEUS! YOU WILL REGRET UNDERMINING MY AUTHORITY!"

The goddess raged, but the Titan was already gone.

* * *

Mijung slowly faded to consciousness on her belly, the side of her face pressed to the firm but soft pillow, facing the other edge of the bed. The covers on the other side were carefully made, and there was the slightest indent on the pillow, but no one was there. The woman reached out a hand, fingering the spot as though she were a jilted lover. The area was cold. The room was empty. Yutrin was gone.

Mijung drew her arm back, fingering the locket at her throat. He had left her. Had he fled because she was a burden? A threat?

Dull despair hit her stomach, but there was almost nothing left to take. Her husband. Soon. She couldn't forget him. She loved him too much to forget.

But how could a mortal's love and desire hold against the power of the gods?

And how could she even survive in this world? She didn't see any food or water on their way through. And she wasn't sure if she could even provide for herself once her stomach swelled. And Yutrin was gone.

She had been stupid to hope that the coward would help her.

She ignored the niggling memory of his tenderness the night before.

Mijung clenched her fists, tempted to curl into a ball, but she needed to find something to eat and drink before the dull ache in her stomach and the dryness in her throat really kicked in. She pushed the covers back.

The door swung open.

"We're in luck, Mijung. There's a river around two miles from here, and there's a bunch of plants growing. I don't see any sign of farm crops—it looks like the farms around here died a while ago—but the wild food seems fine."

Mijung sat up, blinking in surprise as Yutrin walked in, carrying a giant basket of water strapped on his back (Mijung took a moment to marvel at the craftsmanship—the reeds were woven so tightly that not a drop escaped) and a dark leather pack of wild vegetables and fruit. He took the basket off without spilling anything, hands working with it with the autonomy that only came with experience, and he let the pack lightly plop to the ground. "It takes a while to walk there and back because of the glass and metal, but I saw a lot of abandoned houses—I found the basket and the bag in one of them—so maybe there're more supplies we can use. Maybe shoes or sandals that won't be shredded. Speaking of which, how are your feet and arm healing up? Any sign of infection?"

Mijung stared at him for a long while, noting that the burns on his ear, shoulders, hands, and arms were still there and looking quite raw. She also noted that he still wasn't wearing a shirt.

He had come back.

"Mijung?"

Yutrin looked up curiously, ears drooping slightly, and he squirmed in place before kneeling down and reaching into the leather bag, carefully pulling out a pair of scorched used tongs, old cloth, and rocks. He tossed the rocks gently into the fire and placed the basket of water carefully on the ground. "Are you still angry?"

"You came back."

Yutrin's ears twitched in confusion and he pulled several olives from the bag, giving the majority to Mijung before nibbling on a few. "Of course."

Mijung crossed her arms, frowning, and sat up comfortably on the bed, eating the olives one by one. "I'm a burden, though. Pretty soon, I won't be able to contribute anything. You'll have to provide for us both. It's not likely you'll be able to."

"Give me some credit, Mijung." The stones in the hearth started to glow, and Yutrin took the tongs and carefully picked two out, dropping them in the water basket and quickly putting the cloth over the top before the steam could escape. "I get scared a lot. I know that. It's the reason I've been able to survive so long. But there's a difference between self-preservation and just being a dirty coward." He finished off his olives and pulled out a clean turnip, giving it to the woman on the bed. "Running away from a war party when you have no offensive spells prepared is self-preservation. Abandoning a pregnant woman in the middle of nowhere with no way to provide for or protect herself is just wrong."

He carefully dropped two more red-hot stones in, keeping the cloth on the top, then pulled the cooled rocks out of the water and threw them in the hearth again. "I became a cleric because I want to help people. Helping people sometimes comes at a price."

Mijung frowned at him as he slowly rose the temperature of the water, watching as it started to boil. Where did he learn how to do that?

"…I misjudged you, Yutrin. I'm sorry."

Yutrin shrugged and smiled up at her, golden eyes shining in the scant light from outside. "Don't worry, Mijung. Humans do it a lot with goblins. You want something to drink?"

"…Yes, please. That would be nice."

Yutrin's ears perked and he pulled two clay cups out of the leather bag and dipped them in the boiling water, letting them cool before giving one to Mijung. He took a sip, claws making tiny indentations on the cups. "…You know, I promise that I won't abandon you, even if I'm scared. Even when you can't walk around anymore, even when you're giving birth, even when you're nursing, even when you have a little girl or boy to take care of… I'm not going to leave."

Mijung frowned, contemplating her water, then looked over at the goblin. "How do I know that you're telling the truth?"

Yutrin shrugged, sipping quietly. "I came back today, didn't I?"

"…" Mijung finished her water, then stood from the bed. "You did." She ignored the pain in her feet, noting that it looked like they were healing up nicely, and made sure that the cloth wrap around them was thick. "You're probably tired from tromping around all last night and this morning. Have some rest. I'll explore for a bit."

Yutrin straightened, looking as though he would protest.

"I promise I'll be back soon. I need to take a walk, and I might as well try to be helpful while I can." Mijung bent down and gave him a chaste kiss on the top of his head. Yutrin stiffened, his ears perking, the tips going pink and a blush coming to his cheeks. By the time he snapped out of his daze, she was gone.

It took him a while to realize that that had been her way of apologizing.

* * *

"_Mother would tell me I was a pretty girl  
Then she would cry all night  
Nobody thinks that really they're being cruel  
When they suggest that I should try to look like them  
As if God loved the pretty ones best."_

Mijung looked up curiously, listening hard, but the music was being carried by the wind. She hesitantly followed it, hoping against hope that there were more sapient beings aside from those thrice-damned gods. She carefully avoided stepping on any of the glass or metal, walking towards a giant columned building that looked like it had once been grand.

She walked up the steps and slipped past the columns, coming to what looked to be an old courtyard. She noted with relief that it didn't have the glass and metal of the outside. Dying vines clung to the columns, drooping sadly, and the last vestiges of bushes and flowers had turned to nothing but brown, crackly brambles on equally brown grass. The fountain at the center had mucky green water, moss happily growing inside and floating on top of it, and there were three stone women holding pots, presumably what used to let the water flow. The women had a few things missing—a nose here, an arm there—and vines curled around them. Stone chunks littered the ground; they looked as though they were parts of other statues that had been broken over the years. Some of their remnants remained intact. Mijung crouched down and picked up an open stone hand, admiring the craftsmanship. If it hadn't been stone, she would have thought it was an actual hand.

Mijung straightened, looking around for some sign of more to the building. Past the fountain, there was a big wooden door with scratches all over it. She walked towards it, then pulled it open slowly, careful to listen for any sign of the ancient thing falling down on her. It held fast to its hinges and allowed her into the building.

The woman stepped inside, the door closing behind her, and gasped.

A complex mosaic, still intact after gods-knew how long, was fixed on the ceiling, spilling out over the walls and completed on the floor. It felt like she was in the sky. The floor was clouds, gods and goddesses she couldn't name all sitting upon their thrones and looking down lovingly below, and a parting in the cloud showed her the earth, but the mountains, trees, rivers, and oceans made a body, a face, a smile, a woman that seemed to breathe, even despite the fact she was only a design. Mijung looked up, and past the clouds, she saw the night sky, men and women made of stars so vivid that they glowed running across the ceiling. She could see the stars, men, and women joining in a greater picture, the picture of a man, greater than any of the gods on the clouds or any mortal on the earth woman. This was the true power of this world, and it was all Mijung could do to not fall to her knees in awe and worship.

After the initial wonder wore off, Mijung took a moment to mentally praise the artists. This was amazing craftsmanship.

She took a moment to examine the actual room. In the middle of one of the oceans, there was a giant basin with several big faucets on the edge; a mosaic of merpeople swimming through with fish in coral reef with a waterfall leading into it across the inner walls. It was a giant public bath.

Mijung tentatively fingered one of the great faucets, then squeezed, turning.

The pipes rumbled and Mijung jumped away, wondering if she had just broken something.

Water splashed into the bath, a cloud of steam rising and leaving droplets of moisture on the mosaics. Mijung shivered, goose bumps rising on her skin. It was so warm, and the water looked clean…

She undid the red ribbon holding her garments together, and her kimono slipped from her shoulders, falling in a bundle on the ground. A tremor ran through her body. She hadn't taken off her clothes since she had left the other world. That had been months ago. Years? She didn't know. Either way, she hadn't realized how much she needed a bath. And clean clothes.

If this used to be a public bath, then there may be things that were still able to be worn.

Mijung slowly unclasped her bra and pulled down her underwear, trembling. She wanted Soon's touch. She wanted his breath against her ear. She wanted his arms around her waist, her bare chest pressed against her back. She wanted to feel his heartbeat. She wanted him to kiss her and tell her that they would never be apart again.

She missed him.

Mijung watched as the basin filled to the edge, but it seemed to be draining at a rate where the faucet could stay on and the water wouldn't overflow.

She tentatively slipped in, and warmth leaked into her bones, soothing out tension that had knotted itself in her muscles. The water shouldn't be hot or clean. Unless the people who had been here before had made revolutionary discoveries in science, by the looks of things, the pipes shouldn't even work, let alone transport clean, hot water.

But seeing everything else, Mijung wouldn't put such a series of discoveries past these ghosts.

She swam in the bath, letting the collected filth float off, and she felt along the edges playfully, finding a little niche. Curiously, she slipped her fingernails in and flicked, revealing a hidden compartment filled with leaf-thin palm-sized flecks of soap.

She hesitantly took one, running it over her body, and it scrubbed off the accumulated impurities, then rubbed the dead skin off without pause, making her red and raw. She ran it through her hair, forcing out the grime, and the soap flake resolutely stayed unworn. She took her time cleaning, then pulled her clothes from the side of the tub, starting to scrub them underwater.

Mijung didn't know how long she washed in the bath. After a while, she slowly crawled out and turned the water off, allowing it to drain. She would have to tell Yutrin about this place. He would probably like someplace to bathe and a source of water that wasn't a couple miles away over glass-covered land.

And she'd have to check the drainage system to see if she could stop it up the next time she bathed. They should conserve all the water they had available. And she would need to check the pipes—anything that was still in working order could imply that there were either still people here or that the situation wasn't as hopeless as she had thought.

Mijung squeezed the excess moisture out of her clothes, laying them carefully over the faucets to dry. She stood slowly and stretched before walking around the stunning walls and feeling them, finding a door the same way she found the soap compartment. She made it swing open, taking a chunk out of the sky and a giant freakishly muscled man with a lion pelt for clothes, and stepped into the next room.

It felt cold next to the wonderfully warm and steamed up bath. Mijung shivered, squinting in the room, but she couldn't really see much. Little light flowed in.

She raised her hand to cast Light, then she lowered it again, scowling. She missed being able to use magic.

Maybe those gods would make themselves useful and give her and Yutrin their magic back. If they were able to magically break the language barrier, than giving the ability to prepare and cast spells couldn't be that difficult.

She slipped into the dark room, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She could vaguely make out a mosaic decorating the walls, ceiling, and floor, but the light was too bad for her to make it all out. That was a pity.

She'd come back later when the sun was in a better position to see the pictures.

There were rows of benches, clothes draped across them. She couldn't identify some of the clothing—obviously, the society that created this place had different designs for clothes than Mijung was used to—but if it was clean and didn't reveal anything, she was happy.

She stepped through the rows of benches, sorting through the clothes. She picked up something that strongly resembled a bra and quietly thanked the Twelve Gods for inter-dimensional womanly needs before slipping it on.

That was odd. It offered much more comfort and support than the ones she usually wore, and it fit despite the fact she had just randomly picked it up. Another good mark for the people who made this society.

She hesitated before picking up a pair of underwear, checking to see it was clean before pulling it on. She didn't really have a choice of whether or not to use clothes that used to belong to someone else.

She picked up a thin article of clothing that looked like it was a cross between a dress, a shirt, and a robe.

Mijung pulled it on, getting the oddest sense of wearing something made of mist or quicksilver. It rolled across her skin, settling against her as though it had always been there. The sleeves were big and loose, making her feel a little as though she were wearing a ceremonial robe, but it offered a lot more freedom of movement than the kimonos she had had to wear for the rituals her father had made her attend as a child of nobility. The robe/shirt/dress went down to her knees, allowing for easy movement of her legs, and the neck dipped a little more than she was used to, but not so much that she wasn't willing to wear it around Yutrin.

Most importantly, it was all dry and clean.

She collected a bunch of different clothing, some for herself and some for Yutrin, and folded it on her arm, taking only a moment to wrap up her feet with more clean cloth.

She grabbed her own wet clothes before she stepped back into the courtyard, taking one last moment to stare at the partially intact statues of frightened men and women and raging warriors, then she down the front steps, walking back towards where she came from. She had been gone for a while. Yutrin would get worried.

Mijung had forgotten the singing that had drawn her there in the first place.

Someone watched her from behind the columns, low hum deep in its throat and weapons at the ready to strike and kill. Mijung left without the person moving once.

"_Damn 'em all - I create my own perfection__  
__Damn 'em all in the face of their rejection__  
__Damn 'em all - well this dog will have its day__…_"

The person turned away, still singing softly, and went into the building, fingers scraping against the mosaics.

"_My garden's full of pretty men who couldn't stay away._"

* * *

"A public bath? Really?"

Mijung smiled, letting her wet clothes rest on the windowsill to dry and folding up the clothes she had brought back, letting Yutrin take what he needed and turning away for him to change. "Yeah. And the architecture and art in it are amazing. I'll show it to you tomorrow once the sun comes back up."

"And the pipes were still working?"

The woman nodded, running her hands through her hair, and the fire crackled merrily in the background, sunset colors only just reaching the window.

"That's weird. If this place is abandoned, water shouldn't be running. Did you drink any of it?"

"Of course not."

Mijung turned around again, seeing that Yutrin had changed, and luckily, he was wearing a shirt. Mijung couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable with him shirtless without her husband around.

Yutrin nodded, and they both sat down on the edge of the bed, the fire warm and deep. "Good. I'll go, but I think that we should fashion weapons. If there's water and food, then there's life. And life can be a predator or prey for us. I get nervous."

"I'm not fooling myself over what the dangers could be, believe me." Mijung sighed softly. "Just don't spook, okay? Even if you're scared, try to stay rational."

Had Mijung said this to any human she knew, they would have been indignant. Yutrin only shook his head. "Mijung, I've lived my whole life in fear. I know how to think when I'm scared."

He hesitated, ears twitching questioningly, and somehow, she got the sense that he was asking if she wanted him to sleep on the floor or if she was willing to extend invitation for the bed again.

Mijung lay down, going under the covers. "Come on, Yutrin. Get comfortable. We're going to need to figure out how we're going to live here tomorrow."

The goblin's ears perked and he crawled in the bed with her, careful to not touch her, but exuding a warmth that made Mijung almost comfortable with the whole arrangement. But Soon would have undoubtedly murdered Yutrin on the spot for sharing her bed had he been there, and maybe even be angry at her for willingly working so closely with an Evil creature, with the enemy. He was still a goblin. He was still Evil. And she was still sleeping in the same bed as him.

Mijung reminded herself that this was necessary and that she was not betraying her husband.

Nonetheless, she scooted a little further away from Yutrin to keep from accidentally touching him over the night.

She closed her eyes and fell asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Yutrin squinted up, shaking a little in place. It didn't look like the sky really existed—there was only the sun, no blue, and if he concentrated, he saw the shifting stars—but it was all he had to navigate. The sun was so vicious that it burned his skin, but he could deal with that. Burnt skin wasn't so bad next to the eminent threat before him.

He was carefully perched on the windowsill of a house near the edge of the water, trying to re-bandage his feet. The cuts were healing, but the feet themselves were swollen, like something deep within the wounds were forming, and they were warm to touch. It didn't exactly take his experience as a cleric to know that they were infected.

And he didn't have any tools to take care of them. He ran the risk of developing gangrene, and if he did, if he was lucky he would only lose his feet. If he wasn't lucky, he would die.

Fear clutched his heart tightly, but he struggled to push it away, biting his lip hard and trying to imagine Jalyamir standing behind him, her laugh rolling into his ears. _"Keep it together. It's not like running's going to help. You've got a pregnant lady to take care of now, though why you'll take care of a human when the baby's not yours is beyond me…"_

_"It's the right thing to do."_

_"If I turned up pregnant in this wasteland with her husband, do you think he would do even half what you're doing for her or do you think that I'd be skewered?"_

Yutrin sighed, wondering briefly if the sun had made him crack or if he was having a private moral crisis. _"The Dark One teaches that we should treat each other with love and respect."_

_"Each other. As in, goblins. Not humans. Humans like to stick us full of pointy things and serve us for XP."_

_"Humans may be morally corrupt, but that doesn't mean that I have to be."_ Yutrin swallowed hard, making sure his feet were wrapped tight before slipping on a pair of old sandals he had found. _"Mijung won't be able to survive here on her own. I'm going to stay with her for as long as she and the baby needs me. I'm the only one with medical experience who she can trust."_

He carefully stepped to the ground, wincing at the pain a little afraid to look around incase he actually did see Jalyamir standing behind him.

_"But can you trust her? Mark my words—if you keep this up, the only thing you'll get is a knife to the throat once she and the baby get hungry. If you even survive that long."_

_"I won't. I won't survive that long." _And the thought terrified him.

Gritting his teeth past the agony in his feet, he stepped through the field of glass towards the only place he knew had food—the wild.

* * *

Mijung squatted over the ground, careful to keep any of her skin from touching the twisted glass and metal, and took a pinch of dirt between her fingers, only to have it dryly crumble with a feeble huff and fall back to the earth.

There was no way anything could grow in that.

She sighed softly and stood up, looking around at the abandoned homes and wasteland that lay beyond, then glancing at the sky, frowning at how artificial it all looked. The sun was jerking along unevenly, the stars moved around in shapes and forms, uncaring for the laws of physics and astronomy, and the sky itself remained black despite the big ball of fire going across.

This was probably caused by the deities that had been torturing her.

She ran her hands through her hair, banishing thought of anything related to them in her mind, the broken heart locket and the obsidian amulet around her neck heavy against her chest. Maybe she would be able to find out more about them. She had found several books in the houses around theirs—if she could just translate it, then she would be able to see what the people from before knew…

"Mijung? What are you doing out here?"

She turned around to see a familiar goblin with a water skin and a basket staring at her.

"Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean that I can't be useful, so stop treating me like it." She scowled irritably and gestured to the land around them. "I've been exploring to see if there's anything else we can salvage. And I've confirmed that the land is useless for agriculture, but maybe that can be fixed with work."

Yutrin's ears twitched curiously, then he smiled. "Right. I'm sorry—I forget that humans have different ways of taking care of pregnant women than goblins do."

He walked to the house they had taken up, pushing the door open and putting the water skin and the basket down besides the water and berries he had already brought. "Whenever a woman is pregnant or gives birth, my entire village takes care of her and the baby to make sure they're safe. We mean no insult towards her ability to look after herself—it's just the only way goblins can make sure the next generation can survive."

"You're whole village?" Mijung's scowl only deepened, crossing her arms over her chest, a flash of unnecessary anger bursting in her chest. "What about the father? Does he just forget about it or are your goblin women never sure who it is?"

Yutrin turned to look at her, ears twitching, eyes expressionless.

Her stiff shoulders drooped a little and the anger subsided as quickly as it came. "Sorry. That was uncalled for."

"I don't expect a human to know much about goblins." He slipped into the house, and Mijung noticed a limp in his gait. "That's probably why you're always clearing us out."

Mijung winced a little at the bitterness in his voice, inwardly scolding herself before walking in the house. Evil creature or no, this goblin had been doing nothing but help her since they ended up here, and here she was, insulting his culture, his home, and his species without knowing much beyond what her husband had told her.

She leaned on the wall, but he ignored her, focusing on boiling their water at the fireplace.

"So, um, why _does_ the whole village take care of her? Why not the father?" she asked, sitting slowly on the foot of the bed.

His ears twitched, but he didn't turn to look at her. "It's hard to live as a goblin for long. The father always takes care of his pregnant mate." He carefully took a red-hot rock out of the fire with tongs and put it in the water, capping the basket with a cloth to keep the steam inside. "It's hormonal. But the village is required to protect her and any young children because, without their protection, elves and humans would slaughter them. One man can't stand against that."

Mijung crossed her legs, staring at the fire and trying to ignore the frosty pause. "You seem to know a lot about this. Do you have kids?"

That got him to look up at her, albeit with an arched eyebrow. "How young do humans have kids?"

"You're supposed to wait until your twenties or thirties."

"How old do you think I _am?_" Yutrin tossed a rock into the fire. "Mijung, I'm barely old enough to be looking for a mate. I'm sixteen."

"Wait, seriously? You're a teenager?" Mijung's eyebrows shot up.

"Young adult. Sixteen is the very beginning of adulthood for goblins." He looked back at the flames, concentrating on what he was doing.

"And you're what level?"

"We learn fast. We get levels quickly. We have to—we only live until we're fifty at the latest." He tossed a rock in the water, making sure to keep in all the steam. "Where are you from? I lived in the Elven Lands. There were only a few human settlements there. I've never really spoken to someone besides a goblin."

His ears were perked. He was more curious than he was letting on.

"I'm from Azure City, in the Southern Continent. My husband and I were visiting the Elven Lands as messengers, where I fell into the rift."

"Do _you_ have children?"

"No." Mijung rested a hand on her stomach, letting out a nervous chuckle. "This… this'll be my first."

Yutrin stared at the fire for a while, then looked back at her, softening. "Come sit next to me. Sunset will be soon, and it's already cold."

She sat next to him in front of the flames. They stayed a couple inches apart, still too frightened to touch, but the silence was more comfortable.

"Tell me about Azure City. I've never lived anywhere but my village—what's it like with all the people? And the government? And the schooling?"

Mijung perked, eager in recognizing a fellow curious spirit. "I'll tell you a bit about mine if you tell me a bit about yours. We can take turns."

"That sounds good to me. What is it like to have so many people around?"

"Cramped. You're always rubbing shoulders with someone and you need to be very careful so that you don't have some pickpocket taking your things, but it's not without it's charm. You're never alone in a city—you can always go to a coffee shop or something for some company."

"It's not so different in my village, save for the pickpockets. We're a very small community—about a hundred members or so, children and elderly included—but we also have a very small space to live, so we're always stuck together. It's a bit of a nuisance if you want to be alone, especially if you're a cleric, like me. Clerics have to stay in the village more often for the wounded."

Mijung cheerfully hugged her knees, forgetting who she was talking to for a moment. "So you've known all the people in your home since birth? Wouldn't that make getting married a little awkward, since you've known all the girls since you were kids?"

"Not always. There are other goblin settlements, though I wouldn't dream of living there. Our village is very safe. I don't really know if I want to get married, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's hard to concentrate on being a cleric when you're married and you have children. If I get a family, I want to give them the attention they deserve. I'm too devoted to the Dark One for that."

"Huh." Mijung leaned back, staring at the fire. "I can't imagine being that devoted to a god, but I'm an arcane caster, so I guess that I wouldn't know."

"It's special for goblins. The Dark One is the only one who protects us." He smiled, the frostiness forgotten. "My turn to ask a question. Is it frightening to have so many people you don't know around?"

"Not really…"

They kept talking into the night, careful to never ask personal questions, until they had a light dinner and crawled into the bed. This time, they slept with their backs touching, and Mijung didn't notice how strangely warm her companion was, or how he shivered gently.

None of them heard the quiet hissing outside as someone not quite human peered through their window with narrow eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

The next day, when Mijung woke at dawn, for the first time, Yutrin was still sleeping, shivering feverishly. That should have been cause for concern immediately, but Mijung had never been one to get worried fast—she chalked it off as the poor guy finally succumbing to the stress and getting a bug.

She immediately slipped out of the bed, reluctant to spend any more time than necessary in it with him, and peered down at his face, frowning a little.

He looked genuinely inhuman. There were small things resembling her species, but he wasn't human.

She felt curiosity bubble in her stomach, her scientific muse clicking in her mind. This was the first time she saw Yutrin not moving or speaking, and to be honest, she had never known a goblin before him.

She carefully knelt by him, frowning at his face creased with dreams. It looked like he was honestly sick rather than folding under exhaustion. Mijung hoped not—they hadn't found anything they could use for medical supplies yet.

Then her scientific curiosity got the better of her.

Mijung crept closer, tracing the slightly animalistic contours of his face with her eyes. His cheek bones were hard and more defined than any human's she had seen, and tusks jutted from between his lips in what should have been an ugly under bite, but to her, it felt less like an ugly cosmetic defect and more like a hint at a savage, primal side that the normally gentle and intelligent goblin hid from her.

Any other woman would be made wary. Mijung only felt more curious.

She looked closer, reaching out and very lightly tracing his features. He didn't stir, and she noted that he felt unusually hot to the touch.

His bones were harder than even her husband's. It was possible that they were just denser by design. It would make sense—goblins were a savage and primal race, but his intellect was certainly closer to humanoid than the brutal instinct that she usually associated with goblins. He actually seemed quite cultured, given his circumstances.

She frowned slightly, her eyes starting to pick out little scars all over his face. She found one white scar curling around the outside of his right eye, then another one crossing over his eyebrow, then another one at his chin, then another across the bridge of his nose, then another crossing his Adam's Apple…

One by one, she saw a virtual maze of thin white marks, obviously healed soon if not immediately after the wounds were taken. All of them had been healed except one.

There was a scar cutting through the corner of his lip down to his chin. Old, but there was to much obvious scar tissue for there to have been any healing when he had gotten it. It had healed on its own, and it hadn't been made by something little like an unfortunate 'fall into the rosebush' accident (Mijung still had scars all over her arms from that). It looked like it had been made by a knife.

Something shifted uncomfortably in her gut and she started trying to concentrate on his bone structure again, but once the discovery was made, it had to be followed through.

More and more scars became visible under her newly enlightened eyes, and as she started to examine his big, bat-like ears she found a deep nick on his right one, as though he were cattle with his ear cut as a mark of ownership.

She let her hand drift to it, fingering the old wound with the tenderness she used to use when touching her own husband's scars. Through all these marks marring his face, she was getting a glance into his harshness of his life, and she didn't miss the significance of that.

She finally registered the fact he had a fever.

And he wasn't responding to her touches.

Mijung frowned worriedly and felt his forehead. He didn't even stir, and it felt like her skin was burning.

She wrapped the blanket tighter around him before slipping on a pair of sandals. She slung the food basket on her back and grabbed a water skin. She would be worried later if she came back from getting food and water and he still hadn't woken up. "I'll be back soon."

She stepped out into the glass-strewn land, making sure to close the door behind her, and she remained unaware of what was following her from the shadows.

* * *

Mijung stared in puzzlement, trying to wrap her head around what she was seeing. Agriculturally, it made no sense. Hell, just following basic geological properties, it made no sense.

The glass and broken metal was as sharp and twisted as ever in the ground, only stopped by one of the most savage rivers she had ever seen, roaring loudly enough to make her ears ring, and beyond it, without warning, there were trees, some the size of redwoods, and thick wild vegetation tangled at the ground, all of them laden with fruits and vegetables the size of her head. Most of it shouldn't have even been in that climate.

And besides the weird placement, there wasn't a way to get food unless she swam. She didn't know if she could.

"Where did the nymph go?"

Mijung jumped, stifling a startled scream, and spun around wildly to see who was speaking. No one should be there. They were alone. All alone!

"The nymph. Where did he go?"

She looked down, eyes widening.

A woman was at the shore of the river, apparently unmoved by the fierce current, her obviously inhuman eyes fixed and scowling on Mijung. She looked like she was literally made of the water—not quite frozen, but definitely not liquid, and semi-transparent with a blue sheen. Her hair lay soaked on her back, but it didn't move with the rushing water, and she was completely naked.

For some odd reason, even above the roar, Mijung could hear the woman's voice absolutely fine.

"Are you a Naiad?" was the first thing she said to the first person she had seen besides Yutrin since the gods had left her.

The design was different, but the woman held too many similarities to the Naiads of home to be ignored. Maybe they were distant cousins?

The woman scowled, narrowing her eyes a little to glare. "And are you a human?" She huffed a little. "I'm a Potameid. Get it right."

Mijung blinked in surprise.

The Potameid sighed unhappily, swimming slowly to the center of the river. "Why hasn't the nymph come back? It's very late. I always help a few plants grow on this side of the river when he comes. Those Dryad hussies do it too, but I do it the most. So he likes me best." She groaned softly. "I hope he comes back soon. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a nymph man? Let alone a cute one?"

"I think I know who you're talking about." Mijung wasn't sure if she should concentrate on the monumental fact that there was life here besides herself and Yutrin, or on the fact that he had apparently gained himself a fan club of nymphs. (Well, she knew what she _should_ concentrate on, but…)

"Oh, you know where he is?" the Potameid perked, immediately swimming back towards her. "Could you tell him to come back soon? I thought maybe I could pull him in the river for a bit…"

Mijung crossed her arms, frowning and privately critiquing the river nymph's blatant flaunting, picking out the tiny flaws in her body (her breasts looked like overripe melons about to explode, her eyes had a weird glow, her lips were too thick, her skin was too transparent…). "How do you know he doesn't have a wife?"

The Potameid looked her up and down, then shrugged. "I'm the only nymph who can touch the shore, and you're the only human I've seen in revolutions. If you're the only competition, then I'm not worried."

Under other circumstances, Mijung would be offended, but something else had caught her attention. "The only human?" Her stance lost it's slightly hostile intensity. "Why the only human? Do you know?"

"They all left after Persephone's death." She swam to the center of the river again, restless. "The ground couldn't grow anything edible anymore. They had to go and pledge themselves to the wild and to individual nature spirits and minor gods to feed themselves. Why haven't you left?"

The gears in Mijung's mind were turning. "So it's because of the gods that there's absolutely no one here?" Another reason for her to hate them. Like she needed another.

The Potameid scowled. "Why should I answer your questions? I bet you know where the nymph is and you just don't want to tell me because you think you got a chance."

Mijung stayed silent, crossing her arms and marveling quietly at the spirit's narcissism.

"…Actually, I came here to get food for him."

The river woman perked.

"He's very sick. He wouldn't even wake up this morning."

"What?! My poor nymph!"

An apple flew from one of the smaller trees, hitting the Potameid right at the back of her head and sending her face planting into the river.

She came to the surface again, brandishing the apple and shaking it towards the offending branches. "Bitch! I'll cut down your tree!" She flung the apple back at the trunk. "He's _mine!_"

The leaves rustled unassumingly in the wind.

The Potameid huffed, turning back to Mijung, who was trying to keep her laughter firmly in her stomach.

"How can I help?"

"He needs food and water, and if you know where I can get medicine, that would help immensely. He's feverish, so I don't think that I can get him down here, and I'm not strong enough of a swimmer to get to the other side of your river."

"Few are if I don't want them to be," she sniffed, "and I don't think you're allowed in the wild anyway. I'll make my water extra clean for you to fill up your skin, and I'll even bless it for good measure so you don't run out." She swam further out. "I'll bring food in a bit. And when my nymph asks who saved him, tell him it was Srylaia."

Another apple flew out of the trees at her head. The Potameid had already dove underwater.

The apple splashed into the current, and by the time it bobbed back up, it had been swept out on a journey down the river.

* * *

"Yutrin? Are you waking up?"

Alright, now she was genuinely concerned.

He feverishly gripped her wrist, mumbling in Goblin and twisting his clawed fingers so tightly in her sleeve that the cloth tore. His skin was burning to the touch and his eyes were big and wild, distant in a way Mijung had only seen her mother's be when she was in the throws of nearly fatal birthing complications with Mijung's little brother.

Her mother was very close to dying that day, even with four top clerics at her side. They didn't have any rested clerics.

Real worry started to twist in her gut.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of you, and the fever will break soon." She took the wet cloth off of his forehead, squeezing out the warm water and pouring a little more cool water on it before putting it back, praying for there to be sweat to wipe away, but the fever showed no signs of reaching peak. "I'm sure you just have a weird bug or something. It's a wonder we haven't gotten sick faster."

She looked around for a moment, then took a thick clean shirt from the windowsill, tearing a strip off. She dipped it in their water, and thankfully, it proved to be just as absorbent as she thought it would be.

"But I have to say, you picked a really bad time to just suddenly get a fever. We were starting to get along. I was hoping you could tell me more about goblins today." She put the wet cloth to his cracked, dry lips, squeezing little droplets into his mouth for him to instinctively swallow. "Did you know you have a following of nature spirits where you get our food? I didn't know that there was any other life here, and I should be blown away, but I can't help but be disappointed. The Naiad I met was an airhead, though I guess I shouldn't be picky since she's helping us out so much."

A smile played across her lips as she carefully squeezed more water into his mouth. "Just promise that you won't start chasing nature spirits around like some horny teenager. It's hard enough to survive as it is without those crazy nymphs clawing each other's eyes out over you." She chuckled softly, trying to jolly herself out of her increasing worry. "They'd probably go for me too, once they found out we sleep in the same bed. We really don't have to—there are plenty of other beds in the other houses. Why do you think we sleep together if we don't have to?"

He kept mumbling deliriously, spitting out strings of Goblin that she couldn't hope to understand, his green skin becoming more and more red.

Mijung's smile threatened to die, but she forced it to stay where it was. The fire flickered in the hearth. "You'll get better soon."

She leaned down and kissed his burning forehead.

"I promise."

She didn't hear the soft hissing from outside, or the gentle sound of slithering as something lurked at their window, peering in. She shouldn't have made promises.

Death had come to their home.


	10. Chapter 10

"Yutrin?"

Mijung sighed, wiping the sweat from her brow and resting her hand on the goblin's in concern. She didn't know why she was still talking to him after two days. A part of her still believed that he would answer. "Yutrin, please say something."

His eyes flicked to her, clouded, and his trembles didn't falter. She took the cloth off of his head, pouring more cold water on it before putting it back. It was times like this that she wished she had actually learned how to tend to the sick. When Yutrin got better, she'd need to ask him for a few lessons.

She refused to imagine that he wouldn't get better.

If he was gone, she'd be completely alone.

The sour smell of vomit and sweat was in the air. She had stopped noticing it a long time ago. Something else she had stopped noticing was the dying fire in the hearth, their source of warmth slowly being reduced to embers.

She squeezed out more drops of water on his lips, watching as his tongue flicked out to drink. She concentrated on his face, thinking about what to do next. It was possible that there was something out in the abandoned town that could help him. Maybe there was something, anything, that was more useful than some water and cloth. She had to find a way to help him.

She was careful to not admit to the real reason she wanted to leave: she hated seeing him like this. The longer she sat there, the harder it got to deny how serious it was.

She stood up, but his hand grasped her wrist.

Mijung stiffened, looking down at the dark green fingers tight on her skin, then glancing at the goblin's face.

"M-Mijung…"

It was the first time he had spoken coherently in over twenty-four hours.

She knelt by his bed, her eyes getting wide. "Yutrin? Can you hear me?"

His teeth chattered, his eyes threatening to slip out of focus again, but he spasmodically tightened his grip on her wrist. "S-Sorry… couldn't help you for long… I need to tell you how to birth and take care of the baby before I die."

The color drained from her face. "You're not going to die."

He shook his head, tremors wracking his body. "Don't deny it. I need to use the lucidity to tell you what you need to know. Not… not going to… to be clear soon…" He curled up in a ball, trying to retain heat, but his grip on her wrist didn't loosen.

"You've only been sick for a day and a night! You can't d—"

"Infection. It's gone to my blood now. We don't have antibiotics or a god to give me healing spells." The cloudiness came for a second, but he shook his head, dispersing it. "I'm going to go into septic shock. My blood pressure will drop, blood will stop getting to my vital organs, and I'll die from organ failure. Now please let me tell you what you need to know or I'm going to start panicking and I'll be no help to either of us."

She could see the fear in his eyes. He was struggling against it, but his breath was coming in short, quick gasps. Mijung was reminded of a wounded deer she had once seen as a child. The poor thing had been attacked by something, and its entire flank was practically ripped off. It couldn't even stand.

Yutrin had the same look in his eyes as that deer had.

"You're not going to die." Mijung squeezed his hand hard. "I'm going to go and find something to help. Try to stay conscious while I'm gone, okay?"

"Mijung—"

"Don't talk." She dipped the drinking cloth into the water again, giving it to him. "Suck on this for water. I'll be back before you know it."

"Mijung, please don't leave me alone!"

She pried her hand from his grip, picking up a basket from the ground and slipping on her sandals. She glanced back briefly, but the fear had taken him and made the film over his eyes grow again.

"Jaly, please, come back. You know how dangerous it is to go out… I couldn't stand it if you got hurt."

Mijung paused for a moment.

"Jaly…"

She frowned, tugging her shirt. She shouldn't be surprised. He had said he had only been barely old enough to look for a mate. Barely old enough was still old enough.

Mijung wondered what this Jaly was like.

"I'll be back soon, Yutrin."

"Jaly, don't go!"

But Mijung had already left.

* * *

_"Yutrin, you'll need to loosen up eventually." _

_Jalyamir yawned, snuggling up to him and rolling her eyes. "If you keep on waking me up when you have nightmares, we're going to have problems." _

_"I'm sorry, Jaly." Yutrin smiled sheepishly, resting his face against her neck. "I promise not to do it again." _

_"Oh, don't promise that. I'd prefer that you wake me up if your afraid. You scare easy, but that doesn't mean that I'm not willing to give a little comfort." She kissed his cheek affectionately before crawling out of the bed. "Besides, I sleep right next to you and your whimpers can get really loud." Yutrin blushed, having the grace to look abashed. "You want anything from the kitchen?"_

_"No thanks."_

_She smiled, then was gone._

* * *

"You have a choice, child."

That woman from his first night was there again. He couldn't see her, but she was speaking from the bubbling darkness. He knew what she was talking about, even without her elaborating.

The locket around his neck got heavier on his chest.

"You know what it is," the child, also from the first night, whispered in his ear. He looked to see her, but there was still nothing but black.

He reached up, fingering the half-heart locket. He had almost forgotten that he had it. Well, he had intentionally forgotten. He didn't want to consider it. Something inside of him warned that whatever came from the locket was worse than going on to the afterlife.

And after all, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. But at this point, in this world, Yutrin had to wonder if he knew either devil.

"It's not a bad price."

The woman must have been able to read his mind or something. Yutrin looked up, searching the darkness again to no avail.

"You're just given a chance to help people, to help anyone who needs it."

Yutrin swallowed, still running his fingers on the locket.

"And if you open it, you can be free of your obligations to the woman."

"Mijung?" He stiffened a little, shaking his head, but a part of him was very enticed by the offer. "No. She needs help."

"If you don't stay, someone else is already arranged to take care of her. Robin Goodfellow can take her to his home in the Wild and she'd be safe from famine, pestilence, and the wrath of the twins." The voice swirled around him, as plentiful and disconnected as the dust in the air. "The nymphs would make sure that her birthing goes smoothly. She would be taken care of. You'd be free of your responsibilities to her. You'd be free to guarantee your own survival."

Yutrin's resolve was caving at the sound of this. His heart beat fast and his mouth got dry. He could run away.

He reasoned that that sounded like much better care than he could ever provide alone, that it was actually the right thing to let her go there, but he knew that the real reason he was starting to get ready to open the locket. He had a way to run and live away from the human and reconcile his conscience with the idea.

He could be safe.

The image of her smile, the sound of her laugh, flickered in his mind. He shook it off. It was only right to give her to someone who had the resources to look after her.

And besides, a darker part of him thought, it was a real charitable act that he'd been willing to help her at all. She wouldn't have done the same for a goblin. No human would.

"…If I open this, she still gets taken care of? Prenatal care, a midwife, help with the growing baby, everything?" His heart started to beat even faster. He could escape. He'd been secretly terrified of the human killing him as soon as he stopped being useful, and now he could keep his neck and sense of morality intact.

"All of it." The woman's voice rolled through his ears like oil, sliding into his brain and going down his spine. "And the conception of the next child will be handled as well."

That made him pause, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Wait, next child?"

"Oh, she didn't tell you? I suppose she doesn't take it seriously."

The woman was nonchalant. The darkness swirled around him, lovingly holding him in an embrace that he had only known from his mother.

"She needs to bear the gods. That requires more than one baby. Robin Goodfellow—and probably his fairy friends and interested gods and spirits, knowing him—can handle the conception."

Yutrin immediately shook his head, gripping the locket tighter. "She has a husband. She'd never consent to sleeping with anyone else."

"Then I suppose they will just not ask for her consent."

The color drained from his face, his hand getting sweaty on the locket.

"Y-you're telling me that she'll be gang-raped?"

"More than once, probably. Robin is a lustful man and feels entitled, to say nothing of the company of fairies, spirits, and gods he keeps. Even when she doesn't need to be impregnated again, I doubt that they would let their present wile away the hours with looking at old books."

Nausea started in his stomach. He felt like he would throw up. "Oh… oh GOD!"

He started shaking his head so hard that he nearly got whiplash. Safety or not, fear or not, there was absolutely NO WAY he'd let anyone, even a human, go through that!

"No! No, I can take care of her! Keep those monsters away from us!"

"But what are you going to do, little one?"

He could hear the smile in the woman's voice. What kind of sick goddess was this?

"You're body is dying. If you don't open the locket, you'll be unable to help and we'll have to have Robin take her. If you open the locket, then there's no telling what you'll be willing to have happen to her to preserve yourself."

His throat constricted.

"You're in a little Catch-twenty-two, aren't you?"

He was fingering the locket again, panic starting in his chest. "There has to be a way. I can take care of her. I'll do anything."

"Oh, really?"

He felt an unknown pressure on his stomach.

"Well, there may be a way to keep Robin at bay for now."

Yutrin swallowed, struggling to be calm, and bobbed his head. "Yes? Yes?"

"Promise to take care of her. To get food and water for her and all children she has. To make sure that their health remains your priority, no matter how dangerous it becomes."

He nearly got whiplash again from nodding his head. Yes, yes, he could do that.

"And if there ever comes a time when her or one of her children's life is in danger, you will choose them over yourself and die in their place."

He stopped. He hated himself for it, but he stopped.

His entire life had been formed by running away from the humans. He had seen what they were capable of. Hell, he had _felt_ what they were capable of, and it felt painful. He had watched family and friends be burned and destroyed by them without so much as a reason.

_"A little piglet should be marked, shouldn't it?"_

_"P-please l-let me go…"_

He'd watched his own village burn because a human woman wanting their land had accused one of the goblins of raping her. Afterwards, she decided that she didn't want their rocky, infertile land after all. His whole family save for his little sister and his twin had been killed in that massacre.

_"No, please, don't hurt her!"_

_"Get out of here! Get Little Sister out of here! The humans don't have her yet! FOR GOD'S SAKE, YUTRIN, I'M ALREADY DONE FOR!"_

His twin hadn't lasted more than a year after the village.

_"BIG BROTHER! HELP!"_

_"Stop, please! I'm begging you!"_

_"Hey, listen to that! He wants us to stop! Do you think we should listen to the gobbo, bro?"_

_"I like their squeals too much. You guys finish yourselves up, then crush her skull."_

It wasn't long afterwards that humans had taken his little sister away too.

Humans. Humans were the source of all of his pain, grief, and trauma. He was sixteen years old. Any sixteen-year-old human was sucking on their silver spoon and taking their family for granted, probably planning on using goblins for target practice later on. He was already orphaned with hardly anyone to care about him, and here he was, giving care to one of the creatures that had done this. Was he willing to throw away Jalyamir's sacrifice for the sake of one of _them?_ Humans like Mijung were responsible for his entire family's death, and his little sister… oh by the Dark One, Romy…

He owed it to his family to make their sacrifices worth something. To throw his life away for some blasted human was an insult to them.

He felt the ball of hatred and anger hardening in his stomach, then he paused, remembering who he was talking about. Mijung had been nursing him while he was sick, and she had allowed him to share her bed even when there was enough floor for him to sleep on. Sure, maybe some of it was motivated by the fact that he was the only one there, but she was a human performing a compassionate act. And the talks by the fire, the way she smiled, the few but gentle touches…

She hadn't been the one who had taken his family away. She didn't have a say in that. And if he let his hatred rule him and he abandoned her to that unspeakable fate, he was no better than those boys who had murdered his baby sister, or those men who had burned Jaly, or that woman who selfishly set the elves on his village with false accusations.

The fear of taking this deal threatened to take him over, but he held fast, calling on the love that had inspired him to be a cleric in the first place. He kept to that, letting the hatred and terror fade away. Yutrin centered himself, taking a deep breath.

If he died, it was better to die for the sake of someone in need, regardless of the species.

He'd made a promise to Mijung to never leave her. He'd keep it.

"I'll do it."

He felt an odd sense of approval permeating the darkness.

"Then it's settled."

His mind was released from the dark meeting place.

* * *

His eyes fluttered open. The illness still wracked his body and his vision was still clouded, but that wasn't what he was concerned with.

There was some great monster above him, a cloth over its head and snakes tangling at its hair. He tried to scream, but some unseen force trapped it in his throat. A dark, blurry hand reached down for him, clamping on his head and pulling it up slowly.

"By the Twelve Gods! YUTRIN!"

His eyes flicked to the side to see Mijung sprinting from the door, reaching for a fire poker. A huge, thick snake (oh God, was that connected to the monster?), lashed out before she could get there, wrapping around her torso and pulling her up off the floor. She thrashed, but his vision was too blurred to see it well.

"YUTRIN! GET AWAY FROM HIM, YOU BITCH!"

The monster didn't pay attention to her. It only looked back down at him, forcing his mouth open. He tried to run, but he was completely paralyzed. It wasn't even the illness—someone was keeping him immobile.

"YUTRIN!"

The monster's arm rested on his tusks, pressing, and he felt his tusks ripping through skin, and salty blood rushed into his mouth. He wanted to gag, but his gag reflex wasn't working. Something forced him to swallow the welling stream.

For a moment, his throat was cold. Then it started burning.

The flow lessened and the monster backed away, letting its arm hang at its side. The burning flared painfully and he convulsed, waiting for a really painful death, then it passed.

The chills left. He stopped trembling. Sweat formed on his brow, breaking the fever that had gripped him. His vision cleared, and his dizziness and nausea receded.

The creature—a woman with the body of a snake forming her legs past mid-thigh and snakes for hair with a cut cloth over her head—reared back. He took a breath, eyes reflecting his confusion, but slithered out with inhuman speed before Yutrin could say anything, letting Mijung on the bed.

"Yutrin!"

She pulled him into a sitting position, cupping his face in her hands and struggling to make eye contact. "Yutrin, say something!"

He breathed, the illness melting away, and he felt like there was fire in his veins, the monster's blood mixing with his own. The taste of iron was still on his tongue, but he didn't mind. He was looking at Mijung for the first time.

She had tried to save him. She could have died for him.

And he had considered leaving her to rapists.

Her eyes were panicked. "Yutrin, _say_ something!"

He reached up, resting his hand on her cheek. She was a good person.

For the first time, he really believed that he could keep his oath, no matter how scared he got.

"I'm glad you're okay, Mijung."

He wrapped his hands around her and hugged tightly. After a moment, she hugged him back.

They stayed like that for a while.


	11. Chapter 11

"Mijung, I want you to tell me something."

Mijung hung a salvaged kettle over the roaring fire, their only source of light save for the half-moon outside. Her clothes hung on her more loosely than they used to, and her complexion was a little too pale, but her smile was genuine and her eyes were bright when she looked back at Yutrin, who was sitting on the edge of their bed. "Yeah?"

"Where did you get that locket?"

Mijung stiffened.

There was a sudden frosty silence.

"…Where did you get yours?"

Yutrin knew she would ask him. He had prepared himself. If he expected honesty, he should be willing to give it as well.

"A goddess who I couldn't see gave it to me. She said I could open it and be able to heal again, but I had to pay a high price she wouldn't name."

Mijung was quiet, then she looked back at the fire, waiting for the kettle to boil. "The gods of this world are evil."

Either he didn't properly interpret her body language or he was ignoring it. Yutrin hugged his knees, pressing forward with the line of conversation. "They're making you do something, aren't they?" Yutrin asked quietly, shifting to the foot of the bed, his ears flopping a little. "It's okay to tell me."

"They're not making me do anything." Mijung stood up, brushing herself off with a tight frown. "I'm going for a walk."

Yutrin's ears flopped down in discouragement, obviously unhappy with her reaction. He wanted her to honestly tell him about the situation she was in, not throw herself in another unsafe one. "Mijung, it's too dangerous out there." He stood up, grabbing her shoulder as she turned to leave. "I'll go with you. I won't ask—"

Too late, he realized she wasn't in the mood to be trifled with. "Don't touch me, goblin!" She turned on him, clutching his hand hard enough for her nails to draw blood before throwing it back at him, dark eyes furious. "Remember your place!"

She had a chance to see his surprise turn to genuine hurt and fear before she turned and stormed off.

Yutrin stood there silently for a while, fingering his locket, his throat closed up and his heart beating fast.

Remember your place.

That's what those humans said to him before they killed his little sister.

He slowly crawled under the covers, pulling off his shirt, and tried to fall asleep.

* * *

Mijung didn't let herself think at all until she reached the public bath.

She shoved open the wooden door, her footsteps echoing through the spacious room, and she sat at the edge without pause, turning the faucet to allow scalding water through. She tore her clothes from her body, throwing them at the bottom of the bath to cover the drain.

She ignored the pain when she slid in the water. It was so hot it was steaming, but that was fine. She needed the hurt.

The locket felt so heavy on her chest. She wanted to think about what had just happened, but she banished the thought from her mind. Guilt was already squeezing her stomach.

Soon. If only he were here. She wouldn't care at all about the situation if she had her husband with her.

Mijung watched as the water rose.

Baths always reminded her of Soon. Their first time making love had been in one.

She ran a hand through her hair, playing the memories in her head. Her memories of him always calmed her down.

They had gotten dirty because they had been in the woods during a rainstorm. They had been young at the time and she had wanted to investigate some strange magical disturbances in the mountains (it had turned out to be a strange bugbear cult doing divine rituals, but it was harmless enough so that the king didn't bother extending the resources to remove them), and her father, a noble, had assigned a paladin to watch over her in concern, oblivious to the attraction and the secret flirtations between them.

The memory made her smile. Her father had loved her dearly, but he never really understood that she had grown up. If she so much as wanted to go to a store, she had to have an escort. Any men who showed interest in her found themselves either transferred to a far-off island or taxed beyond comprehension, depending on whether or not they were military or civilian. If he had known what she and Soon got up to on that trip, he would have thrown a royal fit and sent relentless appeals to the king to have Soon arrested. It was only through Soon's reputation for honor above all and his long, respectful, and (what Daddy thought, at least) pure and virginal courtship that they finally got her father's blessing for marriage, and even then it required a fight (and an eventual threat to plea to the king to grant her the right to marry without her father's approval).

And to think it may not have happened if he hadn't been protective enough to assign a paladin to her.

Of course, she remembered, Soon had been too much of a gentleman to try anything during that trip in the heavily-wooded mountains, though she had sorely desired him to. When it started to pour down on them, he had attempted to shield her from the water with his cloak, though it had made no difference. After considerable slipping down the steep mountain face (their Dexterity scores weren't the best at the time), they found a little public safe house built by the Azurian government after multiple deaths in the mountains. The safe houses were basically just small but sturdy unmanned inns equipped with dry food and water, a few beds, and a public bath with water drawn from nearby rivers or lakes.

The first thing on her mind was a bath when they had come to one of those places, though Soon had protested since the safe houses had a bad reputation of being homes for criminals lurking to rob, rape, and kill hapless travelers and he didn't like the idea of a poor, delicate, defenseless (Mijung privately scoffed) noble girl being exposed like that in a place he couldn't watch over her. She had jumped on the opportunity to start something with him and convinced him to come to the bath and watch over while she bathed.

He hadn't looked at her while she undressed, which had been a little discouraging, but she didn't give up. He had insisted on doing the gentlemanly thing, which he always did, even during their marriage when he had seen her naked plenty of times. It got a little exasperating when he needed encouragement to actually watch while she was naked, but it never lost its gentlemanly charm.

The water had been freezing. She remembered yelping in shock, and he had turned to make sure she was okay. Of course she was fine, just nude and cold. He was about to turn away again and apologize, but she asked him to come in with her. It took convincing, after all, it wasn't the 'professional' or 'gentlemanly' thing to do. She just cited the facts that he was dirty too, neither of them had anything the other hadn't seen on some other man or woman, and that it would be faster to just bathe together.

In retrospect, it should have been utterly impossible to convince him. He had told her later on that he had wanted to be in there with her, so his willpower wasn't what it should have been.

Mijung leaned back in the boiling bath, watching as steam rose from her red skin. She usually hated boiling baths. Now it was one of the only things distracting her from the vice on her stomach.

Once he was with her, it wasn't long before they started kissing. He had objected to it, telling her that she was his charge and a noble woman while he was just her bodyguard, but he wanted her. She could feel it in his tight grip around her waist, the searing heat in his kisses. After she pointed out that they were two consenting adults and other factors shouldn't matter in this modern day and age, his objections died away and he allowed them to make love.

She remembered his touch. It was always gentle and respectful, even when it was on an intimate area, as if he would stop the moment she told him she wasn't comfortable, and yet it was dominating. Mijung had always liked that in him. He gave her the thrill of being commanded in bed, but the moment she found that she didn't like it, she knew he would relinquish the power without hesitation.

After they were finished in the bath, he had told her quite matter-of-factly that he loved her before drying her off with a towel and ushering her to one of the beds. It had been a few months or so after that until she had told him the same thing.

And even during their marriage, she found that she loved him more every day. With every compassionate helping hand, every noble sacrifice, every smile and soft kiss… she loved him.

But she couldn't remember the shade of gray his eyes were. She couldn't remember the exact way he told her he loved her that day in the bath, though she had reviewed the memory multiple times since then. She couldn't remember the feel of his skin or the precise sound of his voice or the sound of his infrequent but fulfilling laughs…

She let out a furious shout and slammed her hand in the water, making it splash, and she turned off the faucet before it overflowed.

Soon would come for her one day. He always did. She was just frightened that it would be a day when she didn't remember him.

He had wanted children very much, but she was frightened about it for a while, so he waited patiently until she was ready. She warmed up to the idea by their sixth anniversary, and they started trying for kids about nine years into their marriage, when they both had more stable jobs that gave them a reliable source of income, as neither of them were eager to rely on her father for money and her father was too disgruntled about Soon 'stealing' his daughter to help them even if they were. She had gotten pregnant, but she miscarried when she caught a very serious fever that had been going around the city at the time. It took them a while to recover after that, and then Azure City got into a short but vicious war with Cliffport over trading, which Soon had to fight in as he was still a faithful paladin of the city. Of course they didn't want to bring in children during such a messy conflict, and they didn't really have a chance to try even if they wanted to. By the time all those distractions were finished, they had been married for thirteen years.

Mijung groaned softly, covering her face with her hands and curling so that her knees were at her chin and her nose was almost touching the water. They started trying again after that. It was only around a year ago that he came back from that war. Nerves had made it difficult for her to conceive, since she was still a little frightened about having kids and even more frightened of the possibility that she was starting to get too old to get pregnant, though she was only in her thirties and she knew better. Soon had figured it out quickly and soothed her worries in his usual gentle but firm way.

So it only stood to reason that she would have finally gotten pregnant again around when they were sent on that messenger journey to the elven lands.

Soon would be so happy to know that they had another chance at having children.

The water was cooling down slowly. Mijung finally let herself think about the present, forced to move away from the happy fading memories.

She didn't like thinking about the goddess's curse and mandate. She wanted to convince herself that she'd always remember her husband and would never be forced to be unfaithful. She knew that many couples grew bored and decayed over the years, but she and Soon weren't one of them. Neither of them had even thought of being untrue, even when they fought or didn't make love for an extended period of time, and they had always loved each other. The thought of lying with someone besides her husband made her sick to her stomach.

But… even so, she had to face the truth. She was forgetting. And the goddess would force her into getting pregnant again. And again. And again. And again.

She was little more than a breeding mare. The concept made her nauseous, but it was true.

"Soon…"

It occurred to her what she had said to Yutrin.

Guilt flickered in her gut, tightening its harsh grip. She didn't know how he found out, but she couldn't let her prejudice cloud her perception of him. He had only been concerned. It had been horribly unkind of her to throw that back in his face, especially after all he was doing for her and her unborn baby.

Remember your place. She cringed when she thought about the phrase. She felt so… bigoted.

There was a soft hissing sound. Mijung perked, wondering if something was going on with one of the pipes, and looked towards the faucet.

"Is the monster alright?"

Mijung swung her head around, catching sight of the tail end of a giant snake just before it slithered back where she couldn't see. "Don't look at my face. You can't see it."

The voice sounded normal, even pretty. Like one of those gorgeous women Mijung used to feel jealous of before she got married. "Who are you?"

"No one uses my name anymore."

There was loud hissing, and now that she was listening, it sounded like there were hundreds of snakes in the room. "Are you the one making that sound?"

"Is the monster alright? Was he cured?"

Mijung didn't like being unable to see who she was talking to, but she had an inkling of who it was. She trusted it enough to not attack her, so she opted to do as it asked and not try to get a good look. "…Yeah. He's fine."

"Good."

The hissing seemed to ease a little.

"My blood should be able to cure all ailments, but I've never seen his kind before. I wasn't sure it would work."

Mijung self-consciously covered her breasts, staring straight ahead. "Why did you save him?"

"We're both monsters."

"Yutrin's not a monster," Mijung said sharply, and only realized a moment later that that contradicted everything she had believed back in her world.

"I would say so." There was more hissing and the sound of a snake slithering across the mosaics. "But I don't think you believe that. Humans never believe that. Humans judge us because we look so different from them. Even if we think and feel and hurt just as acutely as they do…!"

The hissing got loud, the voice cracking, then there was silence.

Slithering started again and the hissing began softly. "Monsters. They call us monsters because we look different. Because I… we hurt people without meaning to, just because they see our face, and they murder us."

The voice became icily cold, making the hairs on the back of Mijung's neck prickle. She hadn't expected this reaction.

"If it had been you, I wouldn't have done it. But it was him. He's a monster just like me. So I saved him."

Mijung frowned, starting to get a little concerned for her own safety. "I'm sorry."

"You're not. Humans never are." The hissing got a little further away, but it kept echoing around the room. "Go. I don't like it when people invade my home."

"Maybe we can help each other. Yutrin and I are just looking to survive. If we work toge—"

"No."

The hissing got loud again.

"I can't help you. If you so much as see my face, you'll suffer a fate worse than death." There was a slapping sound, like the body of a snake coming up and slamming against the ground. "No. I'm only sparing you because you're his for now. I know how much you pine for your husband when you come here—I hear you moaning his name."

Blood rushed to her face.

"I don't respect that. I don't respect whatever love you think you may have shared. I don't respect you and your grief, and I don't respect the child you're growing."

The words were hard and bitter. It didn't take much for Mijung to guess that this person had been unlucky in love or with men. She took a breath to speak, to somehow calm the slithering person down, but she was cut off.

"The only thing I respect is the monster's willingness to help a human. So I'm not going to make it more difficult for him. I hear the things you fight about." The voice was picking up speed, getting more and more accusatory. "You don't know what it's like to be hated and abused because of how you look. Having men with swords coming for you and your family because they say you're a _monster._ It makes you hate. It makes you hate so much that your heart aches for the opportunity to destroy them all. And he puts that aside for you."

Hands, spidery and clawed, rested on Mijung's bare shoulders, making her jump in surprise. She hadn't known how close the creature had been.

"And that's the only reason I don't add your remains to my garden."

The hands drew away and the slithering started again, the hisses getting more and more distant until she couldn't hear them anymore.

* * *

Yutrin hadn't been able to sleep well, so when Mijung slid under the covers next to him, he was awake and he drew away, frightened of what she'd do to him. All he heard was the vicious tone she had taken when she spoke to him last. It matched so many other humans' before they hurt him or his family.

Instead of snapping and striking him as he had half-expected, she rested a hand on his shoulder, propping herself up on her elbow.

"I'm sorry."

He withdrew, staring with big gold eyes, and he felt his heartbeat rising.

"Please don't look at me like that, Yutrin. I don't know what humans have done to you, and I'll admit that I'm prejudiced, but I'm not going to hurt you." She sighed softly, her grip tightening a little. "That's a lie. I have hurt you, and I probably will keep doing it, but I promise that I'm going to try to stop it now. We aren't home anymore. It doesn't matter who's Evil and Good, what gods we worship, or what species we are. The only thing that matters is whether or not we can survive like this. I… didn't realize that."

She sighed, bowing her head in shame. Yutrin didn't come closer, but his heartbeat slowed down. "You're doing a lot for me. I don't think I can really appreciate the magnitude of it. I have no right to treat you like a lesser person because you're a goblin. You're sacrificing for me and I'm taking it for granted. I'm sorry."

He sat up slowly, ears twitching gently.

"Please help me get over this… well, I guess it's bigotry. Please help me stop it because you deserve better and it's shameful and, worse. dishonorable for me to treat someone who treats me so kindly that way. Please."

He stared at her for a bit, quiet and thoughtful. She bit her lip, wondering if he would accept the apology. He would have been well within his rights to dial back their relationship back to what it had been in the beginning—careful tolerance and need. They both realized that. Mijung's heart ached at the thought.

He slipped an arm around her waist and rested his face against her neck, a soft rumbling purr coming from his chest, vibrating against her breast. "I'm glad you're going to try, Mijung. I'll try to help you."

She stiffened in surprise, then relaxed, letting herself drape an arm around his neck before giving him a soft kiss on the cheek. They sat like that for a while before they both lay down.

"I'll explain the locket in the morning, Yutrin. I promise."

He nodded, then tentatively shuffled closer, wrapping his arms around her, not pressing her close but touching. She hesitated, then rested her arms on his neck and pillow, allowing him to stay in contact with her. They both fell into a better sleep than they had in a while.

* * *

A/N: Alright, I actually managed to post an update while I am at camp. Yay! But it wasn't edited thoroughly because of time constraints and this probably won't be a regular thing. Awww. But anyway, I wrote it and posted it and with any luck it's enjoyable, despite the fact I'm not too happy with it. Have a nice day! :D


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